Everything you need to know about the 2023 season Cherry trees in Bonn now in full bloom

Bonn · The cherry blossom in Bonn's old town is a tourist magnet that attracts numerous tourists from all over the world every spring. The blossoms appear in full splendour in Heerstraße and Breite Straße after the Easter holidays.

Kirschblüte 2023 Bonn: Bilder aus der Altstadt
30 Bilder

Bilder von der Kirschblüte 2023 in Bonn

30 Bilder
Foto: Benjamin Westhoff

It is a natural spectacle that Bonn cannot be imagined without: every spring, the cherry blossom in Bonn's old town attracts numerous tourists from all over the world to Heerstraße and Breite Straße. Despite the Corona crisis, this has also been the case in recent years.

Blossom time varies from year to year

Since the cherry blossom is strongly dependent on the vagaries of the April weather and the preceding winter, the exact time of blossom cannot be precisely predicted. Usually the peak of the blossoming period in Bonn falls in mid-April and lasts a maximum of ten to fourteen days. The warmer it is, the quicker the flowering is over. By the beginning of May at the latest, the blossom dream is usually over and the blossoms fall to the ground.

Cherry blossom attracts tourists from all over the world

For several years now, Bonn Tourismus & Congress GmbH has been recording steadily rising numbers of arrivals and overnight stays during the cherry blossom season, which usually falls in April - apart from the years of the Corona pandemic. Tourists from China, South Korea and Japan are in the lead. If you want to avoid the sought-after hotspots in Bonn without missing out on the cherry blossoms, you can take an alternative cherry blossom tour through Bonn or take a virtual walk through Bonn's cherry blossoms.

Heerstraße and Breite Straße car-free on three weekends

According to the City of Bonn, Heerstraße and Breite Straße will remain largely car-free during the cherry blossom season and will be closed to through traffic from 11 am to 8 pm on each of three weekends. The closure applies to the entire Breite Straße as well as to the section of Heerstraße between Kölnstraße and Vorgebirgsstraße. Residents and delivery vehicles are exempt from this regulation.

The closure will apply on the following weekends:

  • 8 to 9 April,
  • 15 to 16 April
  • 22 to 23 April

The city will again provide toilet cabins for visitors to the church blossom - in the schoolyard of the Marienschule in Heerstraße and at the town hall on the corner of Maxstraße and Breite Straße.

The origin of the "flowering cherries" lies in the eighties

Nowadays described as one of Bonn's most beautiful neighbourhoods in spring, three decades ago the old town was still grey and characterised by heavy through-traffic. In the mid-eighties, several city planners finally tackled the redevelopment of the narrow streets. The historic facades all around were renewed, the traffic situation calmed down and Japanese cherry blossoms were planted - despite initial protests from residents who were worried about the lack of flights in their apartments.

"The fact that the Japanese ornamental cherries were planted there was actually just a coincidence," reports Brigitte Denkel, who was involved in urban planning during the redevelopment of Bonn's Nordstadt. Originally, the responsible office had wanted to plant hawthorns, but these were not available from the nursery. "The parks department then suggested Japanese ornamental cherries instead," says Denkel. Strictly speaking, small crowns of this type were grafted onto normal trunks, explains the city planner in charge at the time. The aim of this method was to prevent the trees from growing too large over the years. At the time, no one could have imagined that the pink sea of blossoms would one day become a magnet for the public.

The trees in the old town are called "Japanese flowering cherry" (Prunus serrulata). In Heerstraße and Breite Straße there are 60 Japanese carnation cherries of the variety "Kanzan", which is known for its particularly lush and bright pink blossoms.

Trees are successively renewed in Bonn

The trees have a lifespan of about 30 years, which many of them have long since reached. There are a total of 300 cherry trees in Bonn's old town. The city therefore began in 2014 to successively cut down and replace the trees. At the end of January 2023, extensive tree maintenance work will begin in the Old Town, whereby the crowns of the flowering cherries will be pruned back. The pruning is intended to ensure that larger vehicles, especially those of the fire brigade and refuse collection, can once again pass through the streets without problems. According to the city, it is also possible that two to three ornamental cherries will have to be felled due to their poor condition. "The trees have a lifespan of around 35 years. The first ornamental cherries were planted in Heerstrasse in 1986," Denkel reports. Should felling take place, the city says replacement trees will be planted as early as this autumn.

Cherry blossom in Bonn experiences social media hype

Both in the offline and online world, Bonn's cherry blossom has become an international event. The Heerstrasse in particular is considered one of the most beautiful streets in the world on social networks. Bloggers mention it in their personal best lists of places everyone should have visited. The Facebook page "Places to see before you die" even dedicated a separate post to Bonn's cherry blossom in 2012, helping it to become even more famous worldwide. On Instagram, several hundred posts about the Japanese ornamental cherries in Bonn can be found under German and English hashtags.

Original text: GA

Translation: Mareike Graepel

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