The Best Places to View Spring in Bloom
There may be no time more joyous than the greening of the year, when cold climates awaken from snowy slumber and flowers warm the world with cheer.
The tulip is a national symbol of the Netherlands, and the flower figures prominently in Dutch history. They take their tulips seriously here: The Netherlands’ Princess Máxima (with help from the wife of Russia’s president) presided at last year's opening of Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden. More than 7 million tulips in 100 varieties are planted by hand each year on Keukenhof’s 80 acres, provided by dozens of royally appointed growers. The 2011 season runs through May 20 at the gardens, located between Amsterdam and The Hague.
Ka-bloom! Hundreds of thousands of flowers burst with color at this horticultural wonder in Victoria, still owned by the descendants of its founding family. Flowers such as pansies, scillas, daphnes and forsythias come out to play around March; as spring progresses, catch crabapples, fritillarias, flowering dogwoods, poppies, peonies and fuchsias. Nearly as interesting as the gardens themselves is their history: A one-time limestone quarry is now the Sunken Garden, for instance, while the Butcharts’ former tennis court is now an elegant, tulip-filled Italian garden.
Also home to such attractions as the de Young Museum and the Academy of Sciences, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park features a half-dozen gardens that sparkle in the spring, including areas devoted to roses, tulips and native California plants, as well as flowers mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. You can also find exotic tropical flowers in the Conservatory of Flowers, which dates from the 1870s and is one of the oldest wooden conservatories in the country.
Commonly referred to as the Kew Gardens, these public gardens in London comprise more than 300 acres and constitute the world’s largest collection of living plants. Springtime means an explosion of color from more than 5 million bulbs, which carpet the 250-year-old gardens with crocuses, irises, tulips, daffodils, snowdrops and bluebells. As the season progresses, you’ll find nasturtiums, violas, pansies and a host of other flowers.
The Bronx becomes a tropical paradise each spring during the New York Botanical Garden’s annual orchid show, now in its ninth year. This year’s production, "On Broadway," runs through April 25 and showcases thousands orchids amid set pieces from the Great White Way. Of course, the garden is about much more than these prized flowers; springtime highlights include grape hyacinths, pandanuses, lilacs, irises and roses. While you’re in New York, be sure to visit the equally spectacular Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which marked its centennial in 2010.
We can’t promise you’ll find the lovely edelweiss flower here, but you’ll certainly recognize the Mirabell gardens, which made a star turn in the film "The Sound of Music." The Baroque-style gardens date from the 17th century and feature row upon row of purple, yellow, white, orange, pink and red flowers, interspersed with hedges, fountains and statuary. Don’t be surprised if the colorful spring flora inspires you to break into song.
The gardens at Chanticleer were once part of the private estate of a family appropriately named Rosengarten, which means "rose garden" in German. The family eventually left the gardens to the public, providing a lovely spot intended as a respite from everyday life. Spring offerings include tulips, daffodils and flowering trees and vines, and a special cut-flower garden bursts with cosmos, dahlia, lily, allium, rudbeckia, and calendula blooms.
This garden complex outside Los Angeles — part of the mammoth Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens — has been transformed over a century from a working ranch to a flower-lover’s paradise containing more than 14,000 plant varieties. Themed gardens feature roses, camellias, lily ponds, and the flowers of jungle, desert, subtropical and Australian regions. Springtime specialties include calla lilies, euphorbias, trumpet vines, bougainvilleas and birds of paradise.
Grant Park's charter states that it will remain "forever open, clear and free." That’s a boon for visitors because the park is a downtown gem, a green area situated between the high-octane Loop district and Lake Michigan. The park fills with flowers as the city wakes up from the Midwest winter; you could entertain yourself all day soaking in the sun and enjoying diverse plant life. While you’re in Chicago, be sure to see the Garfield Park Conservatory, which is often called "landscape art under glass." The conservatory’s Spring Flower Show runs through May 8, spotlighting hundreds of azaleas, hydrangeas and Easter lilies.
Suzhou contains a number of classical Chinese gardens, dating from as far back as the 11th century and so stunning that they are recognized together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The best-known is the Lingering Garden, dotted with wisterias and other flowers, along with bonsai and blossoming trees, blending beautifully with water features, stones and historic buildings. The garden is also considered a storehouse of Chinese lore and culture, and you may find your flower-viewing accompanied by music from a traditional Chinese zither.
When Congress acted in 1820 to devote land in the capital for a national botanical garden, it was the fulfillment of a dream for the founding fathers. Today, the nation’s oldest botanical garden, located on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, is visited by 1 million people annually. The facility’s glass-encased Conservatory houses flowers and other plants native to climates ranging from deserts to jungles; outdoor gardens feature roses, asters, coneflowers and all manner of greenery. The United States Botanic Garden is open every day, and admission is free.
Springtime makes this verdant valley an hour north of Seattle explode with color, carpeting the land with hundreds of acres of tulips, daffodils and irises. The area is best known for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, which runs throughout April and was featured in "1,000 Places to See Before You Die." Display gardens abound throughout the valley for you to visit, but you can also enjoy the living jewels without getting out of your car: Many of the flower fields lie right next to the road.
Founded in 1859, this 79-acre garden in St. Louis is a riot of color each spring, entertaining guests with lovely views of crocuses, camellias, rhododendrons, tulips, snowdrops, clematis, cyclamens, orchids and intensely fragrant sweet olives. Among the highlights is the Japanese Garden, home to azaleas, peonies, lotuses and chrysanthemums. The Linnean House conservatory is fronted by a magnolia-lined walkway that practically showers visitors with the flowering trees’ sweet, heady scent.
The Dallas Arboretum is a young one, created less than 30 years ago, but its gardens are exquisite. The best spot here for a spring fling is the Jonsson Color Garden, where daffodils, tulips, irises and azaleas paint a multihued palette to mark the season. Other arboretum flowers making their appearance in March and April include poppies, marigolds, zinnias, daisies and columbines. The arboretum’s annual spring flower festival, Dallas Blooms, runs through April 10, and this year's theme is "It's a Fairy Tale World."