The parade starts with daffodils, ten acres of them a-bloom at the Laurel Ridge Foundation in Northfield beginning in early April. Just as the daffodils begin to fade comes the annual Dogwood Festival in Fairfield May 1 to 3, with many hundreds of pink and white blossoms lining the lanes of the town's historic Greenfield Hill neighborhood. From May 10 to June 21 the annual Peony Festival brings a Technicolor floral show to Thomaston, where Cricket Hill Gardens is celebrating its 25th anniversary as a prize source for these big, beautiful blossoms.

 Litchfield's White Flower Farm, one of American's leading mail order sources for bulbs and perennials, opens its many acres of spectacular display gardens with tulips and other seasonal blooms beginning in April.

 Each of these showplaces has an interesting history

ACRES OF DAFFODILS

A walk among the daffodils at Laurel Ridge Foundation is a rare spring treat. This unspoiled oasis is a natural landscape of gently sloping woodland fields and aged stonewalls overlooking a small lake with two tiny islands. Back in 1941, when owners Remy and Virginia Morosani found that their pasture was too rocky for planting, they decided to fill the land with 10,000 daffodil bulbs.  Daffodil bulbs multiply and as the numbers continued to grow, the fields became a local attraction. In the mid-1960s, the Morosanis started the Laurel Ridge Foundation to maintain the property.  Today the Foundation is managed and supported by their descendants, who welcome the public free of charge during blooming season, usually early April through the middle of May. The park is located on Wigwam Road, off Route 254 in Northfield, near Litchfield. See details at www.litchfielddaffodils.com

A CANOPY OF DOGWOODS

The hundreds of trees that form a cloud-like canopy of blossoms each spring in Fairfield began back in 1705. That is when Isaac Bronson, a retired Revolutionary War surgeon-turned-farmer, decided his Greenfield Hills property would be enhanced if he transplanted some of the native wild dogwood trees blooming in the nearby woods. Bronson propagated and so did his trees. By 1895, the blooms were so outstanding that the Greenfield Hill Village Improvement Society took on their care, adding scores of new plantings that continue to grow. In 1935 the Greenfield Hills Congregational Church held the first Dogwood Festival, and like the trees, the event has grown prodigiously with time.  Besides the beauty of the dogwoods, the festival offers New England artisans and crafters, an art show, a tag sale, a plant boutique, live music, and children's activities. http://www.greenfieldhillchurch.com/about-us-2/dogwood-festival.

 25 YEARS, SIX ACRES OF PEONIES AT CRICKET HILL GARDEN

 When Kasha and David Furman founded Cricket Hill Garden in 1989, it was one of the first nurseries in the United States to focus on rare Chinese tree peonies. These special plants have blossoms that are among the largest, most colorful and most fragrant of all flowers. They cultivated over 500 different hybrid peonies, choosing the hardiest, most vigorous and fragrant to propagate and sell. Over the years a rocky, wooded hillside has been transformed into a six-acre peony display garden they call Peony Heaven. The family, now including son Dan Furman, enjoys sharing the beauty of the garden in peak bloom in May and June at their annual spring festival.  www.treepeony.com

 WHITE FLOWER FARM: A PERENNIAL SHOWPLACE

 The display gardens at White Flower Farm, one of America's leading sources for perennial flowers and plants, are a riot of color and changing landscapes and blooms beginning in April.  William Harris, a writer for Fortune Magazine, and his wife Jane Grant, a writer for the New York Times, were thinking only of a quiet country place to write when they bought an acres and a half and a barn in Litchfield in the 1930s. But the beauty of the area caused them to become interested in horticulture and as that interest grew serious, the acreage grew and a showplace gradually emerged. In 1950 they founded a small mail order business with the emphasis on quality rather than profit. The founders passed away in the 1970s, but present owners have maintained their high standards as a family business. www.whiteflowerfarm.com

 For more information about spring gardens and a free copy of Unwind, a full-color, 152-page booklet detailing what to do and see, and where to stay, shop and dine in the Litchfield Hills and Fairfield County in Western Connecticut, contact the Western Connecticut Visitors Bureau, PO Box 968, Litchfield, CT 06759, (860) 567-4506, or visit their web site at www.visitwesternct.com