How Gardens by the Bay showcases Japan’s sakura in Singapore

FUKUOKA/KITAKYUSHU (Kyushu) – Japan in February is still in the depths of winter, its countryside filled with bare trees, when The Straits Times visits.

In March, the wintry landscape will be transformed into a panoply of pale pink, when Japan’s sakura or cherry blossoms emerge in springtime.

Thanks to Gardens by the Bay (GBTB), however, the delicate beauty of sakura can be experienced year after year in Singapore’s climate-controlled Flower Dome.

The sakura display has been a constant in the gardens’ annual calendar since 2016. Its 10th edition in 2025 will be its biggest with more than 440 cherry trees, representing 48 varieties, taking root in the Flower Dome from March 8 to April 6.

Half of these trees arrived from Japan in late February, and were carefully unloaded from their climate-controlled shipping containers over a few consecutive nights. 

Sharp-eyed visitors may have noticed these trees already in place at the Flower Dome, although these are still bare of blossoms. The horticultural team has worked its magic to ensure that the trees will bloom closer to opening day – and continue to flower over the one-month season of the display.

ST goes behind the scenes in Japan for glimpses of how the 2025 floral festival has come together, from sakura selection to lantern crafting.

Choosing sakura trees, including one that weeps

About 100km north of Tokyo, in Japan’s Tochigi prefecture, the Mount Nantai volcano looms over the serene countryside between Utsunomiya, the prefecture’s capital, and the much smaller city of Kanuma. 

It is in this countryside that sakura farmer Shuhei Inamori, 45, grows and nurtures sakura trees for export to other parts of Japan – and to Singapore.

He has been one of GBTB’s sakura suppliers since 2018, and has sent some 220 cherry trees for the 2025 event – half of the total number of trees to be showcased. The other half were brought into Singapore from Europe.

Mr Inamori is a third-generation sakura farmer. Yet, his family began not by selling cherry blossom trees, but the soil that nurtures them. 

“Kanuma soil is well-known as fertile and good for sakura. But my grandfather decided that if we could sell the soil for sakura, we could also grow and sell sakura,” he says. 

Kanuma’s black soil has a high density of probiotics and other microorganisms which enrich it with nutrients that encourage root growth. The lack of alkaline clay in the soil also means it has a neutral pH level, which is ideal for sakura. 

His 20ha or so of land – spread across 200 plots in the Kanuma countryside – is full of this fertile soil. At the time of ST’s visit in mid-February, still-bare sakura trees sit there, waiting for springtime to bloom. 

The temperate climate is just right for sakura, he says. “In a colder part of Japan such as Hokkaido, the sakura’s roots can end up freezing during winter.”

According to Mr Inamori, young trees are not good for export because they do not flower well. Most of the trees that he has sent to Singapore are “teenagers” – around 15 years old. Most are 5m tall on average.

Mr Inamori has also sent one special variety for the Flower Dome’s visitors to enjoy: the Yoshino-Shidare, which has a distinctive umbrella-like canopy that almost makes it appear to be weeping. 

“This is the first time I’m sending the Yoshino-Shidare over to Singapore, because it is very difficult to ship,” says Mr Inamori. “Its shape makes it tricky to handle, and very easy to break its branches.”

The Yoshino-Shidare’s flowers bloom in clusters, first appearing in a hue of soft pink before fading to near-white as time passes.

Even in Japan, the Yoshino-Shidare is a rare variety. “Most Japanese people have probably never seen it because you cannot find it in public parks,” says Mr Inamori. 

It takes a three-man team of shokunin, or skilled craftspeople, to extract a tree like the Yoshino-Shidare – or any other cherry blossom tree – from one of Mr Inamori’s plots. The process takes about two hours, and the team works for as long as there is daylight, from sun up. 

A bulldozer first digs a trench around the cherry blossom tree, leaving a half-metre radius around the trunk. Eventually, a ball of soil and roots emerges. The shokunin carefully wrap a thin and porous sheet of hemp around it, hammering it to keep the roots fully hemmed in and protected.

When fully hydrated, these root balls will comprise most of the tree’s weight. Mr Inamori says the average 5m sakura tree weighs about 800kg with the root ball, and 200kg without. 

The weeping Yoshino-Shidare that he has sent to Singapore, which is 5m tall, weighs 2,000kg when the root ball is fully hydrated, and 1,000kg when it is not. 

Mr Inamori and his workers have sent more than 200 sakura trees to the Flower Dome in February, but they are far from done for the season. There are still trees to be sent to other parts of Japan, and they will have barely completed this before they dive headfirst into preparations for the 2026 sakura season.

“But we will make sure to have our own hanami (flower-watching) gatherings,” Mr Inamori says.

“I will be coming to Singapore in mid-March to see the sakura in the Flower Dome for myself – and to see how the Yoshino-Shidare fares in its new environment,” he adds. 

A gift of 130 bamboo lanterns from Kitakyushu city

More than 200,000 people throng Kokura Castle in the Japanese city of Kitakyushu – located on Kyushu Island – every spring to look at the cherry blossom trees planted in its surrounding park.

But the sakura festival is not the most popular event in the castle’s calendar. That would be the bamboo lantern festival that takes place every October. This festival sees the castle grounds filled with thousands of lanterns, crafted from bamboo harvested from the forests around Kitakyushu.

Remarkably, the festival is a grassroots effort, with Kitakyushu’s citizen-volunteers handling everything from harvesting bamboo in overgrown forests to hand-carving and lighting the 30,000 lanterns. 

This year, some 130 such bamboo lanterns have taken a special trip out of Kitakyushu, as a gift from the city to GBTB. They will be part of the sakura display at the Flower Dome. 

One of the volunteers helping to harvest bamboo is Mr Manabu Deguchi, who chairs the Moritomirai Research Lab. The institute develops and commercialises products and technologies using bamboo, besides maintaining some of the bamboo forests of Kitakyushu.

He tells ST that bamboo grows fast, taking just a year to reach a height of 15m. Its growth can be so rapid that the species can quickly overcrowd the forest, preventing sunlight from dappling through. This in turn damages the ecosystem.

“A well-maintained bamboo forest should be full of light, and not darkness, and will attract animals such as foxes,” he notes. 

“When there is a lack of sunlight, both animals and plants will struggle to flourish – including the bamboo, which tends to fall by itself after 10 or so years.”

This adds to the problem of congested forests, with bamboo strewn over the forest floor and preventing animals from roaming freely, especially since bamboo does not degrade or decompose easily. 

Of course, there is a strategy to keeping a bamboo forest well-maintained. “We cut trees with green striations around their trunk, which indicate that it is an older tree,” he says.

Felling a 30kg tree is a fairly quick and straightforward process: A single person could do the job with a small battery-operated chainsaw. 

“But it is dangerous to go into a bamboo forest alone (as bamboo could fall on you), so we usually come here in pairs or groups of three,” says Mr Deguchi.  

Mr Deguchi and his fellow volunteers source material for the lanterns only from abandoned bamboo groves, thereby clearing out the forest for balance to be restored to the ecosystem.

So, while the concept of a bamboo lantern festival might initially sound wasteful, it is in fact a story of “turning bamboo damage into bamboo wealth”, says Kitakyushu mayor Kazuhisa Takeuchi.

“It embodies the idea of respecting and coexisting with nature that has been fostered in Japanese culture since the very beginning,” he adds.

Besides lanterns, the Flower Dome’s display will also feature a replica of Kokura Castle, which was built in 1602 and destroyed by a fire in 1837. It was rebuilt in 1959. 

The lights of Fukuoka’s Phantom Castle

In the centre of Fukuoka are the ruins of Fukuoka Castle, which was built during Japan’s Edo Period (1600 to 1868). 

While the word “castle” might conjure images of a towering fortress, the term is used by the Japanese to refer to the larger estate that people think of as the castle grounds. 

In fact, whether there was an actual castle – or main tower – within the grounds is a point of contention in Fukuoka. City officials say there are no physical remnants or historical records.

But there are plans under way to conduct a proper excavation that will hopefully shed some light on the issue.

For now, a castle will rise during the sakura season, in the form of the Phantom Castle light installation.

The Phantom Castle was first unveiled in 2024. It was designed and built by a team from a subsidiary of the West Japan Railway Company, also known as JR West.

“We toyed with the idea of paying homage to iconic structures like the pyramid shape of the Louvre Museum in Paris. But in the end, we thought it would be better to use the history of the place, as it would provide a strong cultural connection,” says Mr Masakatsu Haraguchi, director of the planning department at JR West Built Co.

“There are no pictures or historical records of what the castle tower might have looked like if it existed, so we had to use our imagination,” adds the Fukuoka native. 

The resulting Phantom Castle structure is about 15m tall, and made with materials that are easily reused, such as light scaffolding steel. It will take a team of 12 or so workers around three weeks to construct it ahead of the sakura season, and to install the LED lights that illuminate it. 

“The lighting structure has piqued a lot of local interest in the space because people can see it at night. It also brings people to enjoy the sakura trees here even after nightfall,” says Fukuoka City representative Yoshi Koyanagi.

He is optimistic that the Phantom Castle will return to Fukuoka during the 2026 sakura season, and says the city is exploring options for a more permanent installation.

Meanwhile, GBTB will recreate the Phantom Castle experience with its own 5.6m replica of the installation in the Flower Dome. Located in the viewing gallery, it will be one of the first sights visitors see.

The illuminated installation is a key component of the Flower Dome’s “yozakura” (night sakura) experience, which promises to cast the pink and white hues of its visiting sakura trees in a different light.

Book It/Gardens by the Bay: Sakura

Where: Flower Dome, Gardens by the Bay, 18 Marina Gardens Drive
When: Till April 6, 9am to 9pm daily