By: Chuck Hagee

Think you know about the Cherry Blossom Festival? How the trees first came to Washington? Why they came? That the Tidal Basin display is the only festival? Think again!

Let's start with what everyone -- or nearly everyone -- considers THE Cherry Blossom Festival. You know -- all those beautiful trees edging Washington, DC's Tidal Basis. Or as the less politically correct refer to that body of water -- Fanny Fox's private pool. If you know what I'm referring to your showing your age.

According to the official explanation the Tidal Basin trees came to Washington in 1912 "as a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the people of Japan." But, they were not the first to grace this area.
Actually the first flowering Japanese cherry trees, or "Sakura," arrived in 1906. And, not in the District of Columbia, but in Chevy Chase, MD.

"Dr. David Fairchild, plant explorer and U.S.Department of Agriculture official, imported 75 flowering cherry trees and 25 single-flowered weeping type from the Yokohama Nursery Company in Japan," according to the National Park Service. He planted them on his Chevy Chase property in order to test them for hardiness.

But, Dr. Fairchild was not the originator of the idea to bring the flowering cherry trees to the nation's capital. That distinction belongs to Mrs. Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore who in 1885, upon her return from a visit to Japan, proposed that the beautiful trees "be planted one day along the reclaimed Potomac waterfront."

Unfortunately, her desire, as conveyed to the U.S.Army Superintendent, Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, met with the same response as often experienced by many a Boot Camp enlistee from a Drill Sergeant -- disdain and rebuke. Yet, she persevered for 24 years.

All the while Dr. Fairchild, after determining the trees' hardiness in a new climate, "began to promote Japanese flowering cherry trees as the ideal type of tree to plant along avenues in the Washington area," according to the Park Service. A group known as Friends of the Fairchilds became interested in his experiment and, in conjunction with Chevy Chase Land Company 300, oriental cheery trees were ordered in 1907 for planting throughout the Chevy Chase area.

The next year, 1908, Dr. Fairchild gave saplings of the new trees to children from each the District's schools to be planted on their school grounds in observance of Arbor Day.