The trees are planted around the moats. Yamatokoriyama city describes about six hundred cherries, mostly Somei-yoshino, set in a ring following the water at Koriyama castle, where they are known locally as the Goten-zakura, the palace cherries. The core of the site, including the keep enclosure, is a prefectural historic site, and in 2017 the castle was added to the second list of a hundred famous castles.

Planting along a moat means planting in a loop, which changes how the place is walked.

You do not walk an avenue from one end to the other here. You go round the outside and come back to where you started, having faced every direction on the way.

From any point on that circuit there are cherry trees on the far bank of the water, and the same trees again upside down in it. Because the plan of a castle is not a circle but a series of angles, the direction you are facing keeps changing as you walk, and you see the same trees a second time from a bearing that makes them look like different ones. A castle festival is held in the grounds while they are out, and the crowd moves round the same circuit. The timing given on this page is not the city's; it comes from the weather record for Nara.