It began with a gift from Bamberger's
The explosion of pink buds and their floral scent bombs are just days away at Essex County's Branch Brook Park.
The cherry blossom trees will flower over a period of three weeks - 5,000 in all, in 18 different varieties - in hues from snow white to vibrant pink.
The annual Branch Brook Cherry Blossom Festival is a yearly celebration of spring, but it began 40 years ago as testament to hope and renewal.
It was 1976 - less than a decade after the 1967 riots - when one particular Newarker wanted to restore a little piece of beauty from her childhood and bring some happy pink back to the worn and weary park.
She is Kathleen P. Galop, who grew up in the North Ward and Forest Hill, and became a corporate lawyer for Prudential and a historic preservation expert.
"Kathleen Galop started the Cherry Blossom Festival," said Dan Salvante, Essex County's parks and recreation director. "She made it happen."
"I don't like to tie everything to 1967," Galop said. "But I thought celebrating the blossoms would be something positive. It would give the city a sense of renewal."
There were fewer than a 1,000 trees then, but the census now stands at 5,000. Since taking office in 2002, Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo has been determined to have Branch Brook overtake Washington, D.C., as the cherry blossom tree capital of the nation, and it has.
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The often-repeated assertion that the 360-acre park has more cherry blossom trees than Washington, D.C., appears to be true; the official site website of the National Cherry Blossom Festival says there are 3,750 trees in the Tidal Basin area, where 700,000 people come to see the blooms each spring.
"To me, it's all about quality life, civic pride and economic development," DiVincenzo said. "We get 100,000 people for our Cherry Blossom Festival. They come here, they eat in restaurants, they spend money."
Like Galop, DiVincenzo grew up with a love of the park and the trees.
"We didn't go on vacations," DiVincenzo said. "Vacation was in Branch Brook Park. We'd take pictures by the cherry trees."
But the cherry blossom trees weren't always part of the Branch Book Park allure. They weren't even included in the original Olmsted plan.
Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape design, favored open meadows and clusters of natural forest, not ornamental trees. His sons followed that vision when they were commissioned to design the Essex County park in 1900.
The result rivaled their father's greatest creations - Central Park in Manhattan, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and other magnificent urban landscapes from Mount Royal Park in Montreal to the U.S. Capitol grounds in Washington.
It was Caroline Bamberger Fuld - yes, that Bamberger - who introduced the cherry blossom trees to Branch Brook Park in the 1920s. During a trip to Japan, she became enamored with the beauty of the robust, flowering trees. When she returned home, she donated more than 2,000 to the park.
Bamberger, who started the department store chain with her brother Louis, "wanted Newark to have more cherry blossom trees than Washington," said Galop, who wrote the labor-intensive applications for the park to be placed on the national and state historic registries. "I think Washington had 2,000 so she ordered 2,001."
Bamberger brought in so many trees, the park had to be extended north of Heller Parkway into Belleville. The Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Visitors Center is Newark in this northern part of the park.
"The trees are generally short-lived, with a life expectancy of 40 years, but we still have some from the original collection," said Paul Cowie, the arborist who manages the Branch Brook cherry blossom tree collection.
Those trees, which Cowie called "monsters," are the thick-trunked, wide-wingspan varieties in the northern part of the park near the visitors center.
Two years after DiVincenzo took office, he ordered an official count of the Branch Brook cherry blossom collection. The number was surprisingly low.
"When we finished the inventory, there were only 987 trees left," said Cowie. "That spurred the restoration of the population."
With the help of the Branch Brook Alliance, a park "friends group" of corporate and private donors, the county was able to go on a cherry blossom tree-buying spree. The latest phase was a $651,000 expenditure for 1,100 trees last year.
"This is the seventh phase of the plantings," Cowie said last week as a crew put in a fresh delivery of 100 trees, to replace some of the 1,100 that didn't thrive.
DiVincenzo said the magic of the Branch Brook park collection is not just in the number but in the variety.
"We have more varieties than anybody," he said.
Eighteen, to be exact, said Cowie.
They range from the early-blooming Okame, which are popping their bright pink buds now, to the late-blooming Kwanzan, which burst big, dark pink double flowers.
The park has abundant white blossoms of the Snow Goose variety, and many weeping trees called Higans, which are most popular with tourists, because the branches arc and cascade to the ground.
Perhaps the best part, though, is the trees have not disrupted the original Olmsted design. They decorate the park, not overpower it.
"I think what's been done there is in keeping with the parks natural setting and beauty," Galop said.
(The Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Festival runs from April 9 to 24 this year. For information call (973) 268-3500 or visit essexcountynj.org)
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.