Plum Grove

This guide to Plum Grove in Osaka traces a graduation gift: in 1963, alumni of Kitano High School donated 880 plum trees to mark their school's centennial, planted at the foot of Osaka Castle on ground once walked by the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. You'll hear how that gift became a public garden in 1974 and grew into a collection of over a thousand trees spanning roughly a hundred varieties, each blooming on its own schedule from late January into March. Walk the paths beside the castle's inner moat, where bare branches and blossoming ones stand side by side.