A very beautiful Guinness World Records attempt has taken place in Japan.

Jupia Land Hirata, a forest park located run by Hirata village in Fukushima, Japan, has successfully achieved a new record for the Most varieties of hydrangea on display.

Entitled the 'world's hydrangea garden', the 50,000 m2 area is home to around 20,000 hydrangea plants. But what is even more unique about this garden is that they sought to bring together as many varieties of hydrangea as possible.

Most varieties of hydrangea

Currently, the garden has over 800 varieties that belong to the hydrangea genus. However, due to the time restriction and complexities of preparation, Hirata village chose 400 varieties to verify for the Guinness World Records attempt on Saturday 14 July.

For the attempt, the official adjudicator had to walk around the garden to verify each and every variety, with the guidance of the specialists. 

Referring to a plant encyclopedia as a visual reference, the adjudication took more than five hours. The official guideline states that the flowers had to be blooming at the time of verification, so any plants without bloom had to be discounted.

Hydrangea 4

Once the long verification was complete, locals and organizers waited anxiously as the official adjudicator and specialists tallied up the results with a final total of 372.

When the final count was announced the crowd was ecstatic and Kazuaki Sawamura, mayor of Hirata village, could not hold back the excitement either.

"I'd like to thank everyone that had worked hard leading up to this day. Now we have the record-breaking hydrangea park!"

Kazuaki Sawamura, mayor of Hirata village

According to the mayor, the concept for the hydrangea garden sprung when a local resident planted a hydrangea on a government property without permission.

"That person did it as an act of goodwill. But somebody had to look after it. Although we had the choice of removing the hydrangea, I wanted to keep it and even grow it as I wanted to nurture this village together with the community -- why would I shrug off a heartful gesture of a local?"

"And instead of just planting more and more hydrangeas of the same variety, I wanted to do something different. Once I found out that there are around 800 varieties, I said 'let's try and bring them all together here'. We even named it the 'world's hydrangea garden' just to make sure that there's no turning back for us."

Now the park holds a Guinness World Records title, the mayor hopes to continue developing the hydrangea garden and even increase their record- they have even developed a new variety to be used especially for the park!

"This is only the beginning for us. We now want to make this garden into something that people all over the world would love."

Kazuaki Sawamura collects the certificate