The Boston Flower & Garden Show takes place March 14 through 18, 2012, in the Seaport World Trade Center, Boston, Massachusetts.

Promised this year are 25 garden displays by local landscape professionals and area nurseries plus 48 lectures and demonstrations by garden writers, industry professionals and chefs and a marketplace with 200 vendors featuring thousands of plants.

Blooms! will again be held in conjunction with the Boston Flower & Garden Show. Blooms! 2012 showcases designs by professional florists, amateur floral arrangers and horticulturists in a display created by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts Inc.

(Photo courtesy of Massachusetts Horticultural Society)

Yeah, it’s the depth of winter, but we like to remember warm weather flowers, don’t we Road Trips Gardeners? Spring will arrive…eventually.

These magnificent snapdragons were snapped by our photographer during an early fall visit to Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California.

These are part of the genus Antirrhinum. According to Wikipedia, “The Garden Snapdragon is an important garden plant; cultivars of this species have showy white, crimson, or yellow bilabiate flowers. It is also important as a model organism in botanical research, and its genome has been studied in detail.”

(Photo by Susan McKee)

The Tropical Extravaganza Festival gets underway tomorrow (February 4, 2012) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, England, United Kingdom.

Running through March 4, 2012, the festival features displays of exotic orchids, tropical flowers and foliage in the Princess of Wales Conservatory.

This year’s festival is inspired by the ‘forces of nature’ – fire, air, water and earth. See the lush tropical landscape of the glasshouse contrasted with vibrant floral displays – fiery reds, yellows and oranges, and shimmering silvers and blues. Discover the ways plants depend on and balance the effects of these elements.

(Photo courtesy of Kew Gardens)

Driving in Virginia at the end of April, Road Trips Gardeners?

You can get everything you need for your herb garden on April 28, 2012, at the “Herbs Galore & More” show at Maymont, 2201 Shields Lake Drive, Richmond, Virginia.

You’ll find more than 40 plant and craft vendors from the mid-Atlantic region selling heirloom plants, trees, ornamentals and (of course) herbs.

(Photo courtesy of Maymont)

The 27th annual San Francisco Flower & Garden Show will be held March 21 through 25, 2012, in the San Mateo Event Center, 1346 Saratoga Drive, San Mateo, California (map)

This year’s theme is “Gardens for a Green Earth”.

Highlights include 20 full-sized garden installations from Bay Area designers, a special Children’s Garden called Sproutopia and a marketplace with more than 200 vendors.

(Photo of a bromeliad courtesy of the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show)

Right in the middle of densely-populated Hong Kong is an oasis of a garden called Kowloon Park (map).

These Impatiens hawkeri (better known in the United States as New Guinea Impatiens) were in full flower in early spring of 2010.

(Photo © 2010 by Susan McKee)

Celebrate the promise of spring at the annual Scottish Snowdrop Festival, held February 4, 2012, through March 18, 2012.

Arranged by VisitScotland, the festival includes more than 50 garden showcasing their snowdrop spots, some of which are open exclusively for the event.

Properties taking part in the festival range from castles and classic country estates to woodland walks, walled gardens and urban retreats. There is also magical Snowdrops by Starlight night time experience.

Everything from a footpath sprinkled with snowdrops by a waterfall which inspired Robert Burns in Perthshire, to carpets of snowdrops at Culzean Castle in South Ayrshire can be enjoyed. During a visit you can also tour castles and stately homes, visit deer parks and tea rooms or see specialist varieties of snowdrop like those at the Shepard House Snowdrop Theatre in East Lothian.

One of the gardens taking part is Cambo Estate, Fife, which has 70 acres of woodland carpeted in snowdrops each year — and, it’s home to the National Collection of 300 species of snowdrop.

As Road Trips Gardeners already know, of course, dates published for snowdrop openings are ‘general’ as unfortunately snowdrops do not flower to order and their flowering can be dependent on which part of the country they are growing in and indeed the variations in our climate. As a general rule, they are two weeks earlier in the Borders and Dumfries & Galloway than in the east of Scotland, and those growing further north and/or on higher ground can be later still.

(Photo courtesy of VisitScotland)

A glimpse of the tulip craze in 17th century Holland comes to the Domes of the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory, 524 South Layton Boulevard, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (map), March 31 through May 28, 2012.

A variety of tulips will create a blanket of spring color at the base of a large windmill during the show, dubbed Tulip Mania.

The Azalea Festival, first held in 1948, returns to Wilmington, North Carolina, April 11 through 15, 2012.

Azaleas should be in full bloom throughout the city, which has a full calendar of special events planned. Included are a children’s azalea tea, Cole Bros. Circus Big Top, a parade, historic home tour and juried art show.

Centerpiece of the festival for us Road Trips Gardeners, however, is the 5th annual Azalea Garden Tour presented by the Cape Fear Garden Club. The gardens are open for visitors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 13 through 15, 2012.

(Photo courtesy of Cape Fear Garden Club)

When spring arrives, the central square in Brussels, Belgium, is filled with flower vendors.

Even though, as tourists, we can’t carry home armloads of potted geraniums or masses of petunias for window boxes, we can buy blooms to brighten our hotel rooms.

Note the red flowers already blossoming outside second and third floor windows around Grand Place.

(Photo © 2005 by Susan McKee)