In 2005, The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (VCBF) was founded by Linda Poole and launched as a Spirit of Vancouver initiative with support from the Vancouver Board of Trade. The first festival was produced in 2006, and formal recognition of the festival’s objectives qualified it for charitable status in 2007. These objectives included public education, arts and cultural programs, and a city-wide blossom viewing program to raise the general population’s aesthetic experience. In 2008, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival was offered a home at VanDusen Botanical Garden, where a new cherry tree grove was planted in dedication to the festival’s blossom benefactor, the Honourable Dr. David C. Lam. In 2011, the festival partnered with volunteers from the newly-formed Japan Fair Association of Vancouver to run the Japanese program Sakura Days. Now foundational to the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, the Sakura Days Japan Fair celebrates and grows the relationships Vancouver and Canada have with Japan, as well as Japan’s original gift of cherry trees. VCBF currently resides at West Point Grey Community Centre, thanks to a partnership with the Vancouver Park Board.

The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival has a simple aim: to connect people from all walks of life through free, low-cost, and low-barrier programming. Drawing inspiration from the Japanese cultural tradition of hanami (花見, “flower viewing”), VCBF effects gathering in the spirit of friendship and initiates awareness of the cherry blossom’s transcendent beauty. Each year, the festival encourages artists to express their responses to these extraordinary trees through music, poetry, photography, design, film, craft, cuisine, and other artistic practices. While fostering civic pride at home, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival also builds international friendships and cross-cultural exchanges via our international Haiku Invitational, which receives poems from 43 countries annually. The festival’s programming—Bike the Blossoms, Tree Talks & Walks, The Big Picnic, Birthday Blossoms, and Cherry Jam, to name just a few—invites Vancouverites to experience the city’s blossoms multitudinously. For mobile and desktop users, the interactive Blossom Maps tracks an estimated 43,000 cherry trees and displays some of the best spots across Metro Vancouver for cherry blossom viewing. VCBF is proud to offer the valuable resource and field guide Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver by Douglas Justice and Festival Cherry Scouts in our shop.

The festival unites Vancouver citizens—a citizenry with a richly diverse cultural heritage—in celebration of this unique seasonal phenomenon. To evoke the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, there is no stranger under the cherry tree. The cherry blossom’s ephemeral nature reminds us of our own fleeting lives, and the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival inspires everyone to seize the moment in celebration.