The first answer you are always going to get.... It would depend upon your zone. More important the micro-climate for your given area is always your starting point. The light angle never changes all determined by the time of the year. Abnormal temps can put you ahead or behind depending. You should rule out abnormal temp variations and go with the norm in setting up your show date. Who can figure what anybody's weather will be at at given time these days that's why I say that.

For me Z.5/5b Kansas City late May early June is peek performance time to show my garden...on average. Then again in 2012 it was two weeks early due to the very mild Winter and early Spring.

Go to your local nursery and tell them your predicament. I am sure they will help you make a decision as to when to show your garden. You also may confide with your garden club members and get their input. All said and done it's always a guessing game. Too many variables and too many to list.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

Dave

This post was edited by dcsteg on Wed, Jan 16, 13 at 2:00

one of the best reasons.. to snap pics.. is when you upload them.. you add a date to the pics name .... and for posterity.. you know when that plant bloomed every year you took a pic ... any chance you did that ... or the camera actually put the date on the pic???

mid june is too late already in my z5 MI garden ..

so if your only other shot at conifer glory is mid may.. what choice do you have...

ken

ps: it was single digits last night in adrian MI ... you dont know what cold is.. lol ...

pps: oh.. trees.. which conifers are.. activate root growth as SOIL warms ... its not just air temps nor light .. once there have been the requisite weeks of root growth .. then they bud out ... thats how i always thought about it.. though i bet the purists will argue such .... and dont forget.. in MI.. my ground is frozen solid until mid to late march.. so when i talk about soil warming.. it might not be the way your soil warms ....

If my mature memory recalls correctly, Firefighter Will in the PNW zone 8 was lamenting how things here in the Midwest zone 5 were putting on their show before his were last year. Due, in part, to coastal influence and a particularly cool spring up there. Your local nurseries may indeed offer the best guess, as Dave said.

tj

I'm in 9b so a warmer area of the SF Bay Area than you are in (I'm in Petaluma). We've been 30-32 at night during this cold spell. I'd say peak spring new growth on conifers here is in March/April! I concur with Ken's point about dating your photos - that will help a lot going forward. By the time June rolls around at my place we are in summer green.

Yep, this really does show the differences in climates and peak times. Since I have an extensive hosta and Japanese maple collection for me, it's usually early to mid June, though it can vary from season to season. We have a brutally long Spring, if that can be a bad thing, as we get bulbs blooming in February(sometimes January) and yet many conifers won't push until mid July.

Spring, in most parts of the country, is a blinding thing. Here, it slowly meanders.

-Will

Just went back and checked dates on my photos - I'd say for conifer new growth peak is mid-late April. My Japanese maples are all over the map, with some at their best in March, others April. And Will - our plum and almond trees are in bloom here now, the narcissus are all blooming as well. And then of course many of the California natives such as Arctostaphylos and Garrya are all in bloom, too. (If Ken is reading this he is gnashing his teeth.) I like your description of spring meandering!
Sara

I lived in zone 9A (Chico), grew up east bay area. Definitely go for the earlier mid May date.

First three photos were taken April 22nd 2010 in Chico and the photo A.p. 'Garnet' was taken last week of May 2010 in Walnut Creek. I spruced up my folks 1970's landscape with a nicer look :>) I'll be flying back down from OR to finish by removing the obvious beasts flanking the garage in the last picture. I just wish I could bring some plants down from OR...

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Thanks for the great input! I'm going to go with mid-May - June sounds like it'll be too late.

Great tip about dating photos. So I'm going to go hunting through my photos; at least I can date them by when they were downloaded from my camera.

Very interesting trying to figure out what triggers spring displays. My Japanese Maples are all over the place too. Our garden club went to a neighboring garden in my area last spring. Their Viburnums were leafed out and flowering and mine hadn't even leafed out yet! There were other differences too. Yet our gardens were less than than half a mile apart; the difference was a matter of altitude - they lived up on a hill which is apparently a lot warmer than my house at the foot of the hills.

this post made me type this somewhere else today..

perhaps it will be of interest to you:

a tip on pix ... learn latin ... it really matters ... its how we know we are talking about the same plant ... some common names are applied to more than one plant..

when i take pix ... and upload them.. the camera calls them something like DCS 002 ... etc ... but my program allows me to add the date.. so they end up 20120116 DCS 002 ...

then when i put them in my PLANT FOLDER ... i add the latin .. in this case a conifer name.. to end up with:

Pinun pungens 'Hoopsi' 20120116 002

so over the years i have all the hoopsi pix in date order ... in one folder ....and the 002 is important if i take more than one pic per day .... the camera kicks those up automatically ...

==>>>>

have a great tour..

the date doesnt really matter.. so dont worry about it.. once you choose one over the other ... no one is going to walk up after and say.. 'if only it were the other date.. it would have been so much better ...'

and if they do.. well.. witch slap them and tell them to get out ... ungrateful idiots.. lol ...

been thru 2 national hosta tours.. a regional conifer tour.. and numerous state and local tours ... 99.9% of the peeps are simply thrilled you invited them ... see above re: the other .1% ...

do the best you can.. to be prepared.. give up a day or two prior .. and relax.. and simply get ready for the hordes ...

and just enjoy it.. the glory is fleeting ... but really now.. it aint worth worrying about .. what will be.. will be .. and your garden.. is better than 99.999999% of all other gardens.. or they wouldnt have you on tour ...

thats is my wisdom for the day.. now i have to go say something stupid in some other post .. to balance the universe ... lol

ken

ps: oh.. and have a friend take pix of it all ... NOT YOU ... someone who would be thrilled to be your sidekick.. and memorialize the event ... and they can also be a docent.. aka garden watchdog.. pitbull.. for those who have hand trowels in their purses.. lol ...