The best way to look at it is this. If you have any tulips planted and they are blooming it is late for the spring pruning. Forsythias bloom right at the time for the spring pruning so when they start blooming start pruning.

Lance

I've lived in Sacramento for 30 years, but grew up in Ohio. I know when it's spring in Ohio, when suddenly there is a mist of green on the trees, just as they begin to leaf out. That usually happens sometime in April, although I have many a photograph of snow on daffodils and little children having Easter egg hunts in the snow, so winter still can hold a grip.

Out here, it's hard to say. Daffodils are blooming right now. The grass is greener in January than in the summer. But there is a moment in mid-February when all of the flowering plums burst into bloom. It's spring then, even though the trees don't leaf out for another month or so.

We don't do spring pruning in Sacto - we're going at it furiously right now. Whatever we don't have done by Valentine's Day isn't going to get done at all.
Anita

That's a tough question for me. Sometimes January feels like spring as you were speaking of. For me though it's later when I feel things are winding up. This is when the bulbs are blooming the grass is emerald, friut tress are blooming, primroses, and the roses are covered with red new growth. It's then that I feel the spring excitement welling up inside me like sap.

I'm with Lance, forsythia == pruning == spring for me. The neighborhood robins usually show up at this time too, but last year they were goofy and never left. And I saw a cardinal last weekend.

When I see this :)

{{gwi:226833}}

Eric

I say "spring is coming" when my first bloomer of the year bursts into vivid rich purple flowers--a species crocus that precedes everything--sometimes simultaneously with the forsythia. Wow--purple and gold! Love it.

That usually happens in February. So I guess spring actually arrives sometime in March or somewhere between the daffodils and the tulips. Our last average freeze date is April 20, but most years I pretend that date is April 10. May, of course, is the high point of the spring season--iris and peonies followed by roses.

I think gardeners recognize spring much sooner than others. How can spring not be just around the corner when there is the promise of blooms any day (the witch hazels and hardy cyclamens.) Crocuses started just before Valentine's day last year, causing us to do a happy dance when our non-gardening neighbors were moaning about winter dragging on. The last freeze date is late April, but there are signs of life now, and we're already excited about the growing season to come. And so many more roses due to be shipped soon.... ;-)

Western Washington state has a lot of marine influence and its seasons aren't your typical temperate climate spring-summer-fall-winter. I lived for ten years in Olympia and remember thinking that spring began sometime in January and continued until the 4th of July. Of course it depended on the year. Probably Spring with a capital 'S' began when the forsythia and the crocuses opened the flowering season. The first endless gray winter I lived in Olympia, moving from Florida, too, when I saw these glorious, oft-maligned plants blooming in other people's yards I swore I would get them for myself, and I did, never regretting it. Here on the farm spring begins in March, assuming the weather is anything like normal, when the violets start to flower and then the spring bulbs bloom in the leafless woods: hepaticas, erythroniums, and (not bulbs) primroses. April and May are when Flora spreads her brightest carpet of flowers.

Melissa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Definition of spring

According to the astronomical definition, spring begins on the Vernal Equinox (usually March 20 in the Northern Hemisphere, and September 21 in the Southern Hemisphere), and lasts until the summer solstice (usually June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere and December 21 in the Southern Hemisphere). According to this definition, therefore, the day called Midsummer's Day in some traditions is the first day of Summer. Meterologists generally define the beginning of spring as March 1 in the Northern Hemisphere and September 1 in the Southern Hemisphere. According to the Celtic tradition which is based solely on daylight and the strength of the noon sun spring begins in early February (near Imbolc or Candlemas) and continues until early May (Beltane). Unlike the other three seasons, people in relatively cool climates are likely to use the astronomical definition for the beginning of spring in popular jargon but retain the meterological definition for the other three seasonal turning points.

The phenological definition of spring relates to vindicators, the blossoming of a range of plant species, and the activities of animals, or the special smell of soil that has reached the temperature for micro flora to flourish. The first swallow to arrive or the flowering of lilac may be the indicator of spring. A number of meteorological stations have planted Syringe parthenogenesis, and the date of full flowering, as determined by defined means, is used as a more precise indicator of the date of start of spring for agricultural activities associated with spring and the passing of frosty weather. It therefore varies according to the climate and according to the specific weather of a particular year.

Here is a link that might be useful: SPRING

As a kid in South Dakota, I was told the first Robin spotted meant spring had arrived.

I was also told it was too cold in South Dakota to grow roses. I was only six, but that news broke my heart. Don't know where I had seen a rose, but it did seem a cruel fate to be totally deprived of our own garden roses.

Now that I think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a South Dakota poster on this forum. Surely by now, someone has figured out how to grow roses there.

Kate

It would be very rare and strange to have a freeze after May 1. Up until then, anything and all things can happen, even as far south as I am. Remember the Easter Sunday in April recently where all the roses south of the Mason-Dixon line were either adversely affected or killed.

Patricia--north of the Mason-Dixon line also! I always refer to it as the BIG EASTER FREEZE! Never had to prune most of my roses that low ever before.

Kate

"It would be very rare and strange to have a freeze after May 1."
Up here, the 'safe' planting day is Memorial Day, but even then there have been frosts and freezes well into June in the odd year.

To me, spring is on its way when the snow begins to recede and I can hop from patch to patch of dead grasses across our field, avoiding the still melting snowdrifts. There is a scent of warming earth in the air and the breeze is gentle. In the woods, the leeks begin to poke through the leaf litter. This can happen anytime in April, although I have a few lovely memories of it coming late in March, and some dreary recollections of it not coming until well into May.
Spring can also be determined here by the influx of morel mushroom hunters from Southern Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. People walking through the woods everywhere swinging bags, cars parked along roads at every entry to wooded State land (and occasionally trespassing on private!) campers set up in the most out of the way places - that's spring on Chandler Hill, LOL!

March 20th.

As soon as I see the spring weeds and the new leaves on my deciduous trees, it's spring. I grow sweet peas and stocks in our "winter". I don't know if you could call it winter truly. Strange that our ash tree is just now losing it's leaves. Seems like everything is happening a little later than it used to. I have daffodils getting ready to make flowers but the trees are acting like its fall so to each his own I say.

My body says: "Spring's coming when my bones stop aching"
My roses say: "Start the prune when the forsythias bloom"

An easy question to answer. I live in the Washington DC metro area. When the Yoshino Cherry Trees around the Tidal Basin and throughout the city come into bloom - THEN it is spring.

It's when I hear the red wing blackbirds and robins. They arrive with the warm fronts behind them.

Dublinbay - we have friends who moved to near Rapid City SD about 8 months ago, and we have been following their temps in the paper ever since. What we marvel at are readings like this: Yesterday: 44/20; Today: 29/10 SN; Tomorrow: 44/15 SN. These wild and sudden changes seem to be the norm. Maybe roses just can't take it... any South Dakotan rose lovers out there, please forgive me - we Californians are a bunch of softies.

In December 2008, for four days, it felt like spring here. Gangs of robins jockeyed for water in the bird bath. Smaller birds watched from a distance, hoping that the robins would leave some water unsplashed. A few of our older and bigger water maples put on some new growth at the tips of their limbs.
Then reality came back in, all blustery and cold. We have gotten much of our annual rainfall in the past two months. Soggy dawg and cat prints are everywhere. Were I an outdoor cat, I'd hate the maintenance it would take to keep my paws pristine.
The wet is just out there.
We've had a little real sunlight. Not much, but enough to spur new growth on the china rose in my kitchen.
Spring might come in late February.
At least the hours of potential sunlight are increasing. That's really the beginning of spring for me. The dreary last weeks of December with days that are shorter until the solstice are the ones I feel need all the help they can get.

Ann, I agree with you about the short dreary days of December. Happily everyone in our family was all well and Christmas went without a hitch or an illness, save a few sinus infections, which none were extraordinary. Sadly, this year we celebrated Christmas on winter solstice and it just seemed to dreary, even the eve of preparation when there were guests dropping in for gift exchange But why did we do that? One of our sons hosted this year (I have quit). They had just moved into her new home and the neighborhood has a beautiful Christmas program that day and all the lights are lit at 3:30 p.m. for the pageantry. They wanted us to enjoy it as soon as we had lunch and gift exchange was behind us, move outside and into our cars before dark (I suspect). :-) She is a good host and it was lovely and the house, food, hospitality and neighborhood were gorgeously delicious but it was a very short day which began to redeem itself the following morning as the sun was 30 seconds earlier in the a.m. and 2 minutes later in the p.m.

The dark days of the year, here just under the 45th Parallel, start around mid-November and last until the end of January: more or less the five weeks before and the five weeks after the solstice, and then the days finally feel longer. Usually. This year a comfortable house and a lot of snow and sun coupled with moderate temperatures have made January unusually pleasant. Yesterday the snow finally melted enough that I was able to get out and prune and train my young plants of 'Paul's Himalayan Musk'--three of them!--and dig out young elms, a task I attack with the greatest enthusiasm, because I loathe elms. The weather yesterday was lovely for poking through the garden. I'm really looking forward to spring.

Melissa

i've always thought we have it wrong, that the world begins again on December 22nd, not January 1.

Like most gardeners, I love to be outside. Sometime during November I start getting depressed as I leave for work in the dark and return in the dark. Every weekend is rainy or windy. I feel like I never get to see my garden. I miss it, no matter how dead and neglected it looks. I spend much time looking out the window. There is scratching at the walls.

January's cold and dark steps up the depression. But, somewhere in the middle of February, things start looking up. Cold snaps last only a day or two, its still light when I get home from work and the hardy amaryllis breaks through the mulch.

Everything gets cleaned up. I invent jobs just to be outside. I sit on my adirondack chair and sip a beer as the snow flurries around me. Yep, it must be spring...

In central Texas, Spring officially arrives February 14th. That's rose pruning day.

I know what Lucretia means.
The winter honeysuckle and the winter sweet are both blooming, so there is a perfume in the air. As I walk around the yard, I see daffodils coming up EVERYWHERE, a random crocus or two poking up their blooms, a hyacinth is showing some color, 1 variety of daffodil is actually blooming, the witch hazels are budding out, the corylopsis is budding out, and the Daphne is blooming which is so wonderful that I do a happy dance every time I get near it.
DANG IT there are things to be excited about and they weren't happening last month. So I'm not saying it's spring, but I am saying that there is enough going on that I am getting super excited about spring!