Tai-haku

Our Great White Cherry, which we sponsored in Linda Vista Gardens in Abergavenny, which I'm sure we've blipped several times, is at its glorious best. There's an extraordinary story attached to Tai-haku, taking up a whole chapter in 'Cherry' Ingram: The Englishman Who Saved Japan's Blossoms, by  Naoko Abe, about how Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram in 1926, to quote from Wikipedia, saw a cherry in a moribund state in a Sussex garden, the result of an early introduction from Japan. He took cuttings and so was able to re-introduce it to the gardening world as "Taihaku", the name meaning 'Great White Cherry'. A real adventure story. You can see something about the book and read a bit of it by looking it up on Look Inside facility on Amazon. Or even buy it!