Dates and details of 2008 mum shows across the United States.

WINTER FLOWERS always come as a special delight—all the more so if they happen to be fragrant. Luckily, we in the South can grow a number of winter-blooming shrubs renowned for their fragrance.

BY EARLY JANUARY, several freezes usually have singed lawns and prairies around Austin to various shades of straw.

MY MOTHER'S ANNUAL New Year's Day count usually records some 60 plants in flower in her Northern California garden. ... Perhaps the most spectacular are the expansive drifts of paperwhite narcissus (N. papyraceus) spread out on the sloping hillside below the house.

THERE IS NOTHING like the fantasy of full-blown, flowery gardens in the middle of winter to reassure us that the earth is again spinning toward springtime. What else but a flower show offers daffodils blooming beneath spires of June-flowering delphiniums or the luxury of inhaling lily perfume five months early?

The branches of moosewood maple ( Acer pensylvanicum ‘Erythrocladum’) turn a glowing salmon red once the weather gets cold.

This is strictly unofficial, but my garden has become an arboretum—a one-sixth-acre collection of small trees and shrubs suitable for a tough climate and a tight spot.

Oh, the blessed climate of California, where frost rarely if ever threatens the magnolia blossoms.

Michael Dirr is one of those rare, driven individuals who make the rest of us look like we're mired in Jell-O.

Yellow-leaved plants are the stars of the awakening garden.