WAIMEA, Hawaii – On Saturday, the town of Waimea celebrated its 22nd annual Cherry Blossom Heritage Festival, an event built around the blooming of Church Row Park’s historic cherry trees. The Japanese tradition of viewing the blossoms – known as hanami – was accompanied by live music at the park for the first time, this year.

Held traditionally the first Saturday of February, festival goers got an all-day lineup of Japanese and multi-cultural performing arts at several locations, plus hands-on demonstrations of bonsai, origami, traditional tea ceremony, fun mochi pounding, plus a host of colorful craft fairs, a large quilt show and food booths.

This year the festival honored Dorothy Badua, strong advocate for the art of Hawaiian quilting, and the Waimea Lions Club, the service organization that planted the park’s first trees in 1972 as a community beautification project and continues to maintain them today.