Does it surprise anyone that women were movers behind bringing the iconic cherry trees to DC? or shakers helping to protect them?

The cherry blossoms are peaking!

And threats to them are growing

Now it's our turn to help protect them

So sad to see what rising seas and subsidence of our capital, as well as neglect of infrastructure,
can do to our national treasures.

It was over a hundred years ago that Mrs. Eliza Scidmore, after a visit to Japan, began her advocacy for bringing cherry trees here. It took 24 years before First Lady Helen Taft took the baton, and voila, the Japanese counsel to the U.S. got the Tokyo Mayor to send us 2000 trees.

But they arrived diseased and bug-infested and had to be burned. In 1912, over 3000 more trees covering 12 varieties arrived healthy and began the iconic legacy that surrounds the Tidal Basin. We sent flowering dogwoods in return.

Read more cherry tree history here.

The Cherry Tree Rebellion

In the late 1930s, along came my book's fictional architect, Nikos, and his real life counterparts with their grand neo-classical design for the Jefferson Memorial. One issue though: some cherry trees would be sacrificed to clear the land.
My fictional Natural History anthropologist, Estela, and her real life counterparts rebelled and chained themselves to a tree at the construction site, with hopes to stop the work. The story is that too much coffee and the need to unchain for bio breaks led to a compromise that involved more tree plantings.

It's a great example of advocacy and action that can inspire our own.