The city's tree experts expect the cherry blossoms in Heerstrasse and Breite Strasse to reach full bloom after the Easter holidays. In the other streets of the old town, however, there are already ornamental cherry trees in splendid bloom.

Since the cherry blossom is strongly dependent on the vagaries of the April weather and the preceding winter, the exact time of flowering cannot be precisely predicted. In Bonn, this is usually ten to fourteen days starting in mid-April. The warmer it is, the quicker the blossoming is over. By the beginning of May at the latest, the blossoms have fallen to the ground and the spectacle is over for another year.

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 - with the exception of the years of the Coronavirus pandemic. Tourists from China, South Korea and Japan are in the forefront. If you want to avoid the popular hotspots in Bonn without missing out on the cherry blossoms, you can go on an alternative cherry blossom tour through the city or take a virtual walk through Bonn's cherry blossoms.

According to the municipal authorities, Heerstraße and Breite Straße will remain largely car-free during the cherry blossom season and will be closed to through traffic from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. 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 cherry blossom - in the schoolyard of the Marienschule in Heerstraße and at the town hall on the corner of Maxstraße and Breite Straße.

Today it is thought of as one of the most beautiful quarters of Bonn in springtime, but three decades ago the Altstadt was still grey and dominated 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 was calmed and Japanese cherry blossoms were planted - despite initial protests from residents who were worried about their homes becoming gloomy.

"The fact that the Japanese ornamental cherries were planted there was actually 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 big 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.

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 began in the Altstadt, whereby the crowns of the flowering cherries were pruned back. The pruning is intended to ensure that larger vehicles, especially fire brigade and refuse collection vehicles, can once again pass through the streets without problems. According to the municipality, it is also possible that two to three ornamental cherries will have to be felled due to their poor condition. "These trees have a lifespan of around 35 years. The first ornamental cherries were planted in Heerstrasse in 1986," Denkel reports. If felling is necessary, the city says replacement trees will be planted as early as this autumn.

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: Jean Lennox