Will April Showers Bring Any Flowers?

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- We are already two weeks into spring, but by all accounts it doesn't look like it outside.

As CBS 2's Elise Finch reported Wednesday, the flowers we normally see blooming this time of year aren't, and the weather is largely to blame.

This year, early April in the Tri-State Area is full of brown lawns, bare trees and very few flowers.

"We look forward to spring and flowers are a sign of spring," said Darien, Conn., resident Holt Smith.

"They're pretty, the colors, they make things look happy," Tuckahoe resident Terry Pugliese added.

"It's just is a demonstration of God's power," Bronx resident Candice Porter said.

"It's such a joy to watch everything open up and color up," added Donna Smith, also of Darien.

A cold and snowy winter coupled with a cool, cloudy start to spring has delayed the spring bloom by nearly two weeks, Finch reported.

"March is the digging time. When everybody digs the material that we buy and that was really set off. So everything is coming in a little later," said Rudy Eisele, owner of Eisele's Nursery & Garden Center in Paramus, N.J. "Flowers and certain flowering trees."

Eisele said typically cherry blossom and magnolia trees would start blooming by now, but not this year.

You may not have any in your yard but there are plants that bloom on schedule, year after year, in any kind of weather, Finch reported.

"There are lots of plants that really are regulated by day length," explained Kristin Schleiter of the New York Botanical Garden. "As soon as it gets the right number of nighttime hours all of a sudden it blooms, like chrysanthemums."

Schleiter who is the senior curator at the Botanical Garden, said in spite of the weather, snowdrops, witch-hazels, and crocuses are popping up and more are on the way.

"In a few weeks we'll have a marvelous compressed season where the things that should have been blooming will be blooming, the things that should be blooming will be blooming too. So it's just going to be flowers, flowers everywhere," Schleiter said.

All despite a temperature roller coaster over the next few days.

If you want to help things along in your own yard, experts say April is a good time to fertilize and start trimming any dead leaves from your plants.

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