We'd like to take a three or maybe four week leisurely trip where we would rent flats and do some slow travel. We'd like our visit to coincide with some things greening up and blooming rather than being the dead brown of winter.. What do you think would be good timing?

April

Most of my trips have been the 3rd week of April and weather has been great on all of them, green things, flowers, blossoms, lambs gamboling across fields .. .

Agree - Mid-April onwards in London. If you are thinking farther north (Lake District for example) I would look at a couple weeks later as they are usually behind the south.

Note that there are two bank holiday weekends in May (first and last Monday of the month) so things can be pricier and busier during those times.

Flowers in London are appearing earlier and earlier, as are occasional warm spells. Here in London (always a bit warmer than the countryside), a lot of the spring bulbs are already over, the trees are well on the way to being fully in leaf, and the chestnut trees are already in full blossom (I'd guess at least three weeks earlier than used to be common). But temperatures have slipped back almost to wintry levels (this week).

Late April and early May will be bluebell season (quite brief), which is worth a special note.

We just returned from Paris and London--tween girls had spring break so this was the time for us to go. The weather was perfect and everything was green and blooming. The gardens at Hampton Court Palace were gorgeous.

I was just going to say that Patrick. We had a lovely few days mid-April but I am back to my winter jacket this week brrr!

It was very warm early April - 20 celsius and warmer. Yesterday it snowed in London.

So you really cannot tell.

Here in Lancashire we had hailstone yesterday for an hour or so and the temperature has been around 9/10 degrees (C) over the last days. We did have things a little warmer which encouraged the leaves on our hydrangeas to emerge, but they are showing signs of frost damage at the moment.

If you intend to see this area, after the next bank holiday on Monday should be a good staring point.

We've already seen the cherry trees bloom here and the coquléliquots are growing in the fields, and the chestnuts are coming forth, but last night there was a freeze, so the farmers and wine growers are freaking out, so who really knows?

When I first started reading this thread, I regretted not planning our UK trip for the spring. The later comments allayed my regret somewhat. Now all I have is regrets about the pound v the dollar.

>>Now all I have is regrets about the pound v the dollar.<<

Why is that?

The £ has gone up a bit in the last few days but it is still near the best it has been in decades.

julies: you've received lots of good response -- just one thing in much of the country there is a lot of green even in the dead of winter.

April through May will give you most of what you want. Just don't count on having 'lovely' weather. Could be, maybe not, or you could have some lovely and some awful.

Sounds like London is similar to where we live--glorious, warm spring weather for a couple days and then a big drop in temperatures with cold and snow/rain a few days later.

March, I am assuming, would mean pretty cold days with maybe just a few crocus or primroses here and there.

Janis--

Maybe should have said "concern" rather than "regret". We're going mid-September, so still lots of time for movement in the exchange rate.

We are looking forward to greenery when we arrive in mid May. We thought we might be too early for spring weather until we saw this report on the BBC US News last night:

"One of the few long-term records has been kept entirely voluntarily by 90-year-old Jean Combes who has noted the precise dates when a handful of trees has come into leaf over the past half-century.

Her note-books show that a particular oak, near her home in Ashtead in Surrey, is now bursting its buds about three weeks earlier than it did in the 1960s."

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39710313

I am sorry we will miss the spring flowers. But are looking forward to see what is growing in the gardens we will be visiting.

AGM...don't worry, there will be tonnes of flowers out in May. Gardens in England are beautiful year round, and should be glorious in May!

We're going May 6-21 to Cornwall and expecting wionders. If it's cold and rainy, well, we'll cope.

AGM_Cape_Cod, I posted a trip report link yesterday, including photos of several gardens visited in mid May. Have a look, you have nothing to worry about: http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...in-england.cfm

I've seen crocus and daffs as early as mid-March in London parks and gardens but I would aim for mid-April or a little later for a full-on spring show.

There's nothing prettier, imo, than the new leaves and early flowering trees in small-ish spaces like St. James' Park. Then, you can follow the show north although the gardens down in Kent will be beautiful as well. Lucky you.

"March, I am assuming, would mean pretty cold days with maybe just a few crocus or primroses here and there."

No idea what your definition of "cold" is.

But I've no idea either where you get this "dead brown of winter" from.

This isn't Minnesota. At its coldest, practically all of England is warmer from Nov-March than anywhere in the US except for California, Florida and the Gulf.

Since we don't have prairies either, typical winter rural landscapes are dominated by mossy trees, (about 30% evergreen) and greenish expanses of grassy meadows: I walk such landscapes practically every day of the year.

Urban streetscapes (where most tourism goes on simply never see winter as Minnesota understands the concept: English towns all have a microclimate in which Midwest-style cold happens for a couple of days a decade.

One recurrent British confusion every four years is to watch the people of Washington (which we're taught is semi-tropical) huddling against the cold at the Presidential inauguration. We simply can't understand how somewhere so far south can have such unspeakably cold weather.

As for New York....