Ashikaga Flower Park Illumination - Garden of Lights (Hikari no Hana no Niwa)

Ashikaga Flower Park in Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, is a botanical garden where you can enjoy seasonal flowers throughout the year. The expansive 10-hectare grounds feature beautiful flower landscapes that change with each season, centered around the spring wisteria displays. The wisteria flowers are particularly popular, with the Great Wisteria trees over 150 years old called the "Miraculous Great Wisteria," which was selected as one of CNN's "10 Dream Destinations in the World." The park has many wisteria trellises, and during the "Wisteria Festival" held from late April to early May when the wisteria blooms, tourists from around the world visit.

Ashikaga Flower Park also has another popular event besides the "Wisteria Festival." This is the "Garden of Lights (Hikari no Hana no Niwa)," one of Japan's three major illumination events and one of the largest illumination displays in the country. This event, which has over 20 years of history, uses approximately 5 million LEDs to create a fantastical world of light completely different from the daytime flower scenery. The "Miraculous Great Wisteria" in particular recreates the spring wisteria flower clusters, with spectacular presentations that change moment by moment from blooming to falling petals, truly delivering emotion that transcends seasons.

The charm of the "Garden of Lights" lies not in mere decorative illumination, but in the rich narrative landscape themed around flowers. The Flower Castle (a castle of light you can enter), the Garden of Light Roses with impressive 120-meter light murals, and the 25-meter illumination tower - these light art installations scattered throughout the park invite visitors into a fairy tale world.

The "Garden of Lights" is held annually from mid-October to mid-February for approximately four months. Its overwhelming quality has won numerous prestigious awards in Japan, and combined with excellent access just a 3-minute walk from JR Ashikaga Flower Park Station, it continues to be beloved by many as one of the premier winter traditions in the Kanto region.