Sights and Scents at Red Wing Park
Something’s always blooming at Red Wing Park, where tended gardens and wooded trails provide good places for walking in any season. Earlier this week, I was awed by the ethereal beauty of 175 cherry trees in bloom with thousands and thousands of pale pink flowers. Near the park’s entrance, a trail wanders through the peaceful Miyazaki Japanese Garden, which honors Virginia Beach’s Sister City relationship with Miyazaki, Japan. A waterfall cascading into a small pool, a red bridge crossing a stream, a rock and sand garden, and stone benches among the trees and bamboo are some of the traditional elements in this recently-expanded garden.
In the adjacent Rose Garden, more than two hundred rose bushes – red, coral, pink, yellow, white and lavender – will soon bloom. Another path passes through a wooded Conservation Garden and the Reba S. McClanan Fragrance Garden, where gardenias and magnolias, among other plants and flowers, lend their sweet scents to the air in the summer.
For a longer walk, a paved trail leads along a stand of cherry trees and past the POW Garden Memorial to the Nature Trail, which winds through habitat for deer, squirrels, possums, woodpeckers and the red-winged blackbirds that give the park its name. Farther along, the Nature Trail cuts through the loblolly pines to a cypress swamp. In the fall, parts of this trail blaze in red, gold and orange as the leaves on the deciduous trees turn colors in the cooler air.
The park offers all the usual amenities – picnic tables, ball fields, playgrounds and tennis courts – as well as a dog park, but its walking trails set it apart. The park is glorious on a sunny day in the spring, but wooded trails offer pleasant, shaded walks in the summer as well. Located on General Booth Boulevard, four miles south of Rudee Inlet, Red Wing Park is open from 7:30 a.m. until the posted closing time, with free admission and plenty of parking. Sometimes I stop by just to smell the roses.
