TRAVELING IN STYLE : Side Trips : Garden City

“We’re really racing head to head with Mother Nature,” says David P. Murbach, manager of the Gardens Division at New York’s Rockefeller Center. “The city doesn’t usually feel the full effects of spring until around the end of April.” But Rockefeller Center, with Murbach’s help, will explode with springtime blooms April 3 when the complex’s first Outdoor Flower and Garden Show debuts. More than 20 of the best growers, landscape designers, nurseries and botanical gardens from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will fill the Rockefeller Center grounds between 48th and 51st streets (and Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas) with elaborate gardens. All manner of spring flowers will appear, with special attention given to an Easter lily display (interspersed with topiary figures from the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida), and to daffodils--about 13 varieties of which are included. Visitors can enjoy the show daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., through April 11. Admission is free. Incidentally, Murbach isn’t too worried about the weather: “Most people don’t realize this,” he says, “but midtown Manhattan tends to be a few degrees warmer than the surrounding area, because all the tall buildings absorb heat during the day and radiate it back into the atmosphere.”