Attendance at this spring’s Historic Garden Week in Virginia events exceeded expectations, with ticket sales surpassing $726,000. The statewide garden-club tours held each April have raised almost $15 million during the past 76 years. Proceeds benefit the restoration of historic public gardens throughout Virginia. At the 89th annual meeting of The Garden Club of Virginia last week, the Massie Medal for Distinguished Achievement - the club’s oldest and most prestigious award - was presented to Margaret Page Bemiss, author of “Historic Virginia Gardens: Preservation Work of The Garden Club of Virginia, 1975-2007.“ Bemiss is a member of the James River Garden Club.

Spring has officially arrived, hooray! As of Friday night, the sun will be overhead in the Northern Hemisphere for six months, our seasons of spring and summer. How do you measure the ar rival of spring? There are many ways. Although astronomers forecast the “official” arrival of spring with great accuracy, we have many low-technology ways to remind us that spring is here.

Enough gloom and doom. There’s a new outlook on the home-decor front for spring—a palette of fresh blues, saucy pinks and a veritable laundry line of clean whites. And let’s not forget yellow, which Pantone chose as its top shade of the year.

Erica Gilliam says winter is a gardener’s time to dream. “Winter is absolutely the most ideal time to sit down with a blanket, cuddle up in the sunlight by a window and enjoy those plant and seed catalogs,“ said Gilliam, a master gardener in Henrico County. It’s also a time to ready your garden for spring. There are plants to prune, tools to clean, seeds to buy, structures to repair, compost heaps to turn and vegetable and flower beds to plan.