Your Road Trips Gardener is really happy to see planters filled with city-hardy flowers bedecking the sidewalks in front of Manhattan buildings.

These begonias were planted by color in Midtown last spring: red, yellow, pink and apricot.

Not only is it nice that building management takes the time to plant the blooms, it’s a measure of New York City’s civility that they’re not damaged, destroyed (or taken home) by passers-by.

(Photos ©2012 by Susan McKee)