A strategic crossroad reflecting the history of old days | Redevelopment as a garden town full of flowers and greeneries | Aiming for the coexistence with rich natural environment
Nishitani district is located in the northern part of Takarazuka City and occupies 2/3 of the city's entire area. This district entertains the visitors with peonies, dahlias and cosmos flowers throughout the year.
History of peonies in Takarazuka goes back a long way. There exists a record that the peonies produced in Takarazuka were displayed at the World Expo in Paris held in 1900. Moreover, places, such as Sukagawa in Fukushima prefecture and Daineshima in Shimane prefecture, which have become one of leading peony producers in Japan, started the peony cultivation from the Takarazuka seedlings. In the Nagatani Peony Garden, beautiful peonies, including those which “return” to the hometown, produce large colorful blooms in winter and spring.
“Nishitani Fureai Yume Plaza”, which was opened in 2005 as a new base for neighborly interaction and communication, is a complex facility consisting of a hall, children's house, a service center and an agricultural promotion center named Nishitani Yume Ichiba (meaning a “dream market”). Making use of a main house and warehouse belonging to an old family with a traditional rural flavor, this facility is utilized as a center for communication among citizens going beyond generations.
You can enjoy Nishitani region all the year around, ranging from gathering peony flowers, chestnuts picking, sweet potato digging, strawberry picking, viewing wild plants to fishing. You will fully enjoy yourselves with the rich natural environment through birdwatching and hiking while in the woods.
This little village is a home of mountain cherries and depicted as a background of the novel named “Sakura Mori (meaning a guardian of cherries)” written by a famous novelist Tsutomu Minakami. The old experiment forest, which was a legacy of the late Shintaro Sasabe (1887-1978), who devoted himself to preservation and cultivation of the old chrries inherent to Japan, is now open to public as a natural park inludes an easy hiking course, and attracts many visitors. The name “Ekiraku Sanso” is derived from the famous Chinese poem written by Su Dongpo, but now the place is popular under the name of the “cherry orchard”.
1-1 Toyo-cho Takarazuka City, Hyogo Pref. Japan Zip. 665-8665