Fort Worth Botanic Garden

Three decades have passed since the Japanese festivals first kicked off in the 1990s, and the number of attendees grows each year. More than 10,000 people attended last year’s fall festival, and Yamagata expects at least that many to turn out for the spring festival, set for April 23-24.

The Fort Worth Botanic Garden and Botanical Research Institute of Texas and its partners got nearly $2 million in grants to study blueberries in North America and ferns in Colombia. But, the COVID-19 pandemic is making both projects more complicated.

The city of Fort Worth will pass management of the Fort Worth Botanic Garden off to a nonprofit research organization, the latest step in a yearslong…