Aliyya Swaby Photo
Wooster Square’s spring riot has sprung.
When the flowers did not bloom in time for the first Cherry Blossom Festival in 1974, “Queen of Wooster Square” Beverly Carbonella wired fake blossoms onto a Yoshino cherry tree for a newspaper photo op.
Carbonella’s daughter Christina Cassidento (left) in front of the fake blossoms.
Decades later, Wooster Square festival organizers still have not managed to pin down the Mother Nature-controlled schedule of the cherry blossoms, instead guessing whether changes in winter temperatures will delay or speed up their spring appearance.
This year it looks like plastic blossoms will not be necessary.
Last week’s surprise nosedive in temperature worried organizer Charlie Murphy that the blossoms wouldn’t show up for the 43rd Annual Cherry Blossom Festival April 24. But he was heartened by the sunshine that emerged the middle of this week, expected to continue through Sunday.
The annual stunning, fleeting cherry blossom display means a lot to Wooster Square neighbors like Murphy.
Murphy moved to Wooster Square from Wallingford 13 years ago with his wife Charlotte. When he had been living in the neighborhood several years, he was asked to join the board of the Historical Wooster Square Association. People have passed along their love of Wooster Square, in the form of old documents and memories, which he now shares and keeps alive.
The trees have bloomed each of the 13 years he has been here, Murphy said. A cherry tree can live an average of 30 years. “They get weathered, splits, insect infestations,” he said.
Murphy adopted one small Yoshino tree on Hughes Place, which the Urban Resources Initiative installed with three small siblings in November. Their first two years, the trees are especially thirsty, needing 25 gallons of water per week. Starting in early May through the fall, Murphy and a tree co-parent will each fill buckets with 12.5 gallons of water once a week and dump it in the plot, to ensure it survives.
Murphy.
Passing Hughes Place along the park Wednesday, Murphy was happy to see the young trees already full of white blossoms.
Hired by a Historic District Study Committee to help protect the neighborhood’s 19th century houses in 1969, architectural consultant Jim Skerritt suggested planting 72 Yoshino cherry trees around the perimeter of Wooster Square Park — following Washington D.C.‘s popular tradition.
The tradition developed from a small concert with one band (and fake flowers) to a large festival with more than 30 local organizations selling their wares and displaying presentations of Wooster Square history. Four different bands are scheduled to play in the concert this year starting from noon to 4:30 p.m. April 24— Hillhouse High School Band and Shades of Blue Dance Troupe, swing group Tuxedo Junction, salsa band Carlos Y Su Momento, and St. Luke’s Steel Band.
Adopted young tree.
Usually organizers plant ceremonial trees at the festival. This year, the schedule is too packed for that, Murphy said. Organizers will dedicate two corners of the park to honor people and places important to Wooster Square.
Greene Street and Wooster Place will be called St. Michael’s Corner in honor of the oldest Italian Catholic Church in Connecticut, on Wooster Place. Academy Street and Court Street will be named after the neighborhood’s queen, Carbonella, who died weeks after the 2015 festival she had originally founded.
Christy Haas, the city’s recently retired tree warden, will receive this year’s Friends of Wooster Square Award, for her close attention to the city’s parks and pro-tree advocacy.
In 1998, the Cherry Blossom Festival was deemed a “washout” for the first time, by the New Haven Register. Organizers moved the date of the festival from April 26 to April 19, sure that the trees would bloom two weeks earlier because of the mild winter. Instead, rain and wind forced them to move the date back to April 26.
Then, the rain washed out the rain date, forcing them to send everyone home by mid-afternoon. The festival was not rescheduled.
“We’re all heartbroken. We just couldn’t catch a break this year,” Carbonella said at the time to Register reporter Randall Beach.
As several of the trees along the park’s perimeter already begin to sprout soft white petals, Murphy feels sure they’ll be in full bloom at least by this weekend, if not the next.
“When the blossoms get to their peak, we’ll see if they’re as bright as usual,” he said.
If Wooster Square were a celebrity walking the Red Carpet and asked who she was wearing, she would reply "Yoshino".