Sorry, Tidal Basin: The National Arboretum’s sprawling collection of cherry trees offers the best and most colorful experience in the city.
Ben and Jenny Marron take photos with their children Caleb and Lucas beneath the cherry blossoms at the U.S. National Arboretum. Every year, the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin spring into brilliant bloom, creating an unforgettable scene — and drawing huge numbers of people who clog the paths around the monuments.
The advantages of spending an afternoon at the arboretum are apparent: Wide-open roads! Few cars! The ability to wander off the pavement and touch the grass between trees, and even spread out picnic blankets with views of flowering cherries and a pond in the distance! All this before we even get to the blossoms themselves.More than 70 varieties of cherry trees grow across the arboretum’s 446 acres, including three hybrids that were actually developed there.
Each stop is marked with a large pink placard. Look up that number in the brochure or on the app to find a photo of the blossoms and a biography of the plant: It’s interesting to learn that the Yoshino at Stop 29 is a clone of one of the trees that first lady Helen Taft originally planted at the Tidal Basin in 1912. On the other side of the arboretum, near the Administration Building, is a cultivar developed at the arboretum named after Taft, developed from a clone of an original Yoshino.
That connection to nature is what makes encountering cherry trees at the arboretum different from the Tidal Basin or Hains Point. Exploring is worthwhile: Da Silva, the interpretive specialist, hopes visitors do stray off the marked path, to places like a corner of the flowering tree collection at Crabtree and Hickey Hill roads ideal for a picnic. “The land rises away from the intersection,” da Silva says. “Not much, but just enough that I think a lot of people don’t bother to head up that way.
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