Flowering Tree Tour

Start your tour at Soulard Market, a farmers' market dating from 1779. Here farmers and growers are selling potted herbs, vegetable starts, and pussywillow branches at cheap prices. When you have bought more to plant than you can carry, drive West on Lafayette Avenue, stopping to buy your coffee at Rue Lafayette Restaurant. Continue clockwise around Lafayette Park to admire the blooming red bud trees, the flowering dogwoods and cherry trees, and the occasional Japanese "Blood Red" maples.

Continue 1.4 miles West on Lafayette through the Gate District and Lafayette Terrace. You will pass Cassilly and Cassilly Warehouse, the boarded up Garavaglia's Market, and the newly rehabbed St Dominic Priory.

Go South (left) past Reservoir Park with more flowering trees and newly turned on fountain ("Naked Truth"). Turn West (right) into Tower Grove Park where the forsythia bushes have already dropped their blooms like gold coins. At Center Cross Drive (flagpole and Shakepeare's Falstaff statue), go North (right) and then East (right) onto Magnolia Drive. Go two blocks and turn North (left) on Thurman admiring the purple wisteria vine at the alley.

For a quick tour of stunning house architecture and flowering trees, go left or right on Utah Place and return to Thurman. Additional side trips West on dead-end Flad or Castleman Streets give close up views of the allee of redbuds there. Continue North on Thurman, turning West (left) on Shaw. More flowering trees at Missouri Botanical Garden or browsing at Gringo Jones Imports for pottery or trellises. Greg and Leonard, the owners, have just returned from a buying spree to Mexico.

Turn North (right) on Vandeventer Avenue, then West (left) at the Vandeventer STL Fire Station. Continue West on Forest Park Parkway, past the explosion of color on the Washington University Medical School Campus. Exit the Parkway at Lindell Blvd (right, quick left) and continue the architectural house tour with flowering trees.

Lindell Blvd dead-ends at the Danforth Campus of Washington University, so go South (left) a short two blocks and turn West (right) on Wydown Blvd for more Clayton mansions, manicured lawns, and flowering trees including lilacs. At Big Bend Blvd (one of the longest continuous streets in St Louis County), go South (left) past on the left and on the right. As you pass on the left notice the line of flowering redbuds planted twenty years ago by "Coach" Ray Nevels and the .