Roses, they say, don’t need much publicity. But in Chiba, just outside Tokyo, they’re about to become global stars. The Keisei Rose Garden, home to over 10,000 bushes in full technicolour bloom, has been tapped as a showcase venue for the World Rose Congress 2025. This event will draw horticulturalists, travellers, and a fair number of flower-snapping Instagrammers from around the globe.
For a prefecture better known for Narita Airport than petals, it’s a chance to show the world it can do more than shuffle tourists between terminals.
A garden with pedigree
The Keisei Rose Garden has been flowering since 1959, when the Keisei Electric Railway established it as something far more pleasant than another commuter hub. Today, it’s a carefully tended expanse of fragrance and colour, offering 1,600 varieties of roses, from aristocratic deep reds to playful pastel hybrids.
Walk through in late spring, and you’ll likely think you’ve stepped into a Victorian oil painting—only with a Japanese sense of order that keeps the chaos charming rather than overwhelming.
Roses with an economic scent
Hosting the World Rose Congress isn’t just about horticultural bragging rights. Chiba’s tourism bosses are banking on it to bring fresh revenue, new visitors, and a touch of glamour to a prefecture usually overshadowed by Tokyo and Kyoto.
“We’re delighted to welcome the world’s rose lovers to Chiba,” said a local tourism official with a smile, suggesting that the prefecture had been waiting for this moment. “It’s about flowers, yes—but also about people, culture, and the kind of hospitality Japan does best.”
Translation: hotels will be full, restaurants bustling, and taxis busy. In a country still rebuilding its international visitor numbers post-pandemic, a significant event with global appeal is the boost tourism planners pray for.
A double act: Keisei and Kusabue-no-Oka
Chiba is not putting all its petals in one basket. The Kusabue-no-Oka Rose Garden, in nearby Sakura City, will join forces with Keisei to give visitors a twin-garden experience. One garden dazzles with scale, the other charms with intimacy, forming what officials boldly call “Japan’s rose capital.”
Whether that title sticks is anyone’s guess, but you can’t accuse them of lacking ambition.
Petals meet policy
The World Rose Congress itself is no small affair. Delegates will come armed with secateurs, seed catalogues, and a passion for roses as cultural symbols and economic drivers. Expect serious sessions on breeding, conservation, and international trends, mixed with the lighter joys of garden tours and photo ops.
For Japan, the congress offers something bigger: another chance to remind travellers that there’s more to the country than bullet trains and cherry blossoms. Roses, after all, bloom longer and demand fewer weather forecasts.
Tourism blooms too
Pair the rose experience with Chiba’s other attractions—temples, seaside towns, and samurai heritage sites—and the prefecture hopes to extend visitor stays beyond a quick sniff and selfie. Chiba is selling itself as both a gateway and a destination, where tradition and modern tourism can meet under an arch of climbing roses.
As a visiting horticulturalist put it, “The roses are magnificent, but it’s the mix with Japanese culture that makes it unforgettable.”
Why it matters
Events like this are not just pretty distractions. They are part of Japan’s broader tourism recovery strategy, attracting visitors with specialised interests who spend more, stay longer, and often return. And roses, unlike some gimmicky attractions, have universal appeal.
With the congress on the calendar, Chiba can reinvent its image from transit hub to floral haven. Whether that rebrand lasts beyond 2025 remains to be seen, but for now, the prefecture is determined to put its best blooms forward.
A fitting flourish
When the Congress convenes in 2025, the roses of Chiba will be asked to do what they’ve always done: look beautiful, smell divine, and remind humans that sometimes the simplest pleasures are the most enduring.
And if, along the way, they help Chiba draw in more tourists, fill more hotels, and polish its global profile, that’s just good business dressed up in petals.
As Peter himself might say, “In the end, roses don’t just grow on stems—they grow on economies.”
By Charmaine Lu
BIO:
Charmaine has always had a quiet kind of courage. She grew up in Shanghai, a city that moves at a tempo all its own, and somehow managed to keep her own rhythm studying accounting for the discipline, then the arts for the sheer love of beauty. “I needed both,” she says, “to feel whole.”
When she left China for Sydney in the 1980s, she carried nothing but a degree, a suitcase and a belief that she could start again. The first sea breeze off the harbour felt like permission. She met Stephen, and together they built a family, two children, a home filled with laughter, and a life straddling two cultures without apology.
Work has always been more than a job. Long before search engines became the centre of commerce, Charmaine was quietly helping companies be found and read not just SEO but stories people wanted to click on. That is still her gift: finding connection in a crowded world.
Her life is less a résumé than a testament to grace under change, the accountant’s discipline, the artist’s eye, and a heart big enough for two continents.
