It's easily reached by car and plane, and, unlike many bigger-league cities, a stay here is fairly affordable. But perhaps the best reason for a Yankee to visit Richmond in spring is the scenery.

The daffodils and crocuses are in full bloom, and the landscape is dotted with pastel-colored tree blossoms.

There are a number of public gardens, estates and historical sites where you can take quiet walks across grounds terraced with flower beds, crab-apple trees, dogwoods abloom with pale-yellow blossoms - all with a backdrop of newly budded maples, elms and magnolias.

Start with the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens - 40 acres of gardens and the mid-Atlantic's only classically styled conservatory open to the public.

In the glass-domed conservatory, the humid air is perfumed with tiers of flowers from around the world: orchids in all shades and sizes, tulips, roses, cyclamens, hyacinths and azaleas. Outdoors, there are winding pathways of flowers and blossoming trees leading to ponds with bridges, where you can see turtles sunning themselves on rocks and sunfish jockeying for position in hopes of being fed.

On the banks of the James River, Agecroft Hall is a Tudor estate originally built in Lancashire, England, in the late 15th century. In 1925, Richmond resident Thomas C. Williams Jr. bought it at auction and had it dismantled, shipped across the Atlantic, and rebuilt on 23 rolling acres in the city's Windsor Farms section.

Visitors can tour the mansion and the gardens designed by landscape architect Charles Gillette to reflect the opulence of English gardens, including a fragrance garden, myrtle walk, rose arbor, bowling green and turf maze.

And then there's Maymont, a 100-acre botanical wonder that's a combination of museum, park and gardens. Maymont was the estate of financier James Dooley, whose Victorian mansion was emblematic of the city's gilded age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

With no heirs, Dooley and his wife bequeathed the estate to the city, and Maymont opened in 1925 as a public park and museum. Visitors can tour the mansion, carriage house and other outbuildings.

The gardens contain the Dooleys' Doric temple-style mausoleum, wildlife exhibits, a nature center, ponds and bridges, and stone gazebos in styles ranging from rustic to Italian neoclassical.

Richmond is more than sprawling gardens and estates. It's also home to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, which contains the most extensive collection of the writer's manuscripts, letters, first editions and personal belongings.

There's also a museum dedicated to the life of native Maggie Walker, who was the first woman in the country to charter a bank. The bank still exists as the Consolidated Bank & Trust Co. and is the largest continually operating African American-operated bank in the United States.

There's plenty of local history in places such as the Museum of the Confederacy, the Black History Museum, the Valentine Richmond History Center, and the John Marshall House.

Visiting Richmond

For information about places to stay and things to see and do in Virginia's capital, check with:

Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau

401 N. 3rd Street

1-800-370-9004

www.visit.richmond.com

Virginia is for Lovers

901 E. Byrd St.

1-800-847-4882

www.virginia.org