In New Rochelle, residents are celebrating the long-awaited arrival of spring with a first-time Daffodil Festival. In Pound Ridge and Lewisboro, they’re coming along for a ride on scenic drives featuring thousands of new daffodil bulbs.

Planters of blooming daffodils line much of Main Street in downtown New Rochelle. Here’s one of the planters I shot this morning at the corner of Main and Center Avenue.

The Daffodil Festival kicks off at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday with a reception in the rotunda of New Rochelle’s City Hall at 515 North Ave. Last fall, 1,200 daffodil bulbs were planted along the front walk leading to City Hall.

In all, some 6,500 bulbs were planted around some of the most visible areas of the city, including the New Rochelle Public Library, Huguenot Children’s Library and City Court.

The planters were done by Anthony Bulfamante and the downtown Business Improvement District, I understand. Here’s a shot by Barbara Davis, community relations director at the New Rochelle library.

And baskets near Monroe College, also by Barbara.

The festival’s sponsor, the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce’s Community Fund for Civic Beautification, has worked with local school groups, nurseries and neighborhood associations to get bulbs planted throughout the city. The goal is to get thousands more daffodil bulbs into the ground every fall to make the spring festival bigger and better each year.

“I think this Daffodil Festival is really going to take off,” says Joanne Bartoli, coordinator of the festival and former president of the New Rochelle Garden Club. “I’m just so excited about it — I feel like an expectant mother. New Rochelle is on the move and a real renaissance is going on.”

The Tuesday reception will feature light refreshments and music. For more information, call the Chamber of Commerce at 914-632-5700 or Bartoli at 914-632-5411.

Since the beginning of the Scenic Daffodil Drive in Pound Ridge in 2005, members of the Pound Ridge Garden Club have sold about 25,000 daffodil bulbs to local residents. Last year, they sold some 8,000 bulbs for fall planting along local roads.

This seems to be a particularly late spring for daffodil blooms in northern Westchester, says Mary Legrand, horticulture chairwoman of the garden club.

Mine are nowhere near ready to bloom. Here are a couple of shots from last spring.

To take full advantage of all of the early-, mid- and late-blooming bulbs, the drive in Pound Ridge will run through April 30, Legrand says.

The scenic drive, which runs along 37 miles of roads in Pound Ridge, begins and ends at Trinity Corners Shopping Center on Westchester Avenue in Scotts Corners.

Scenic Daffodil Drive brochures are available at the Hiram Halle Memorial Library, Pound Ridge Town House and Scotts Corner Market, or by calling 914-764-8660.

On consecutive Fridays and Saturdays — April 11 and 12 and April 18 and 19 — garden club members will hold a bulb pre-sale (for fall delivery) and daffodil exhibit outside Scotts Corner Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For more information about ordering bulbs, call 914-763-3356.

The Lewisboro Garden Club was so impressed with the Pound Ridge drive that they launched their own Golden Roads Program last year.

As part of the roadside planting program, some 2,200 bulbs were planted at four public sites last year and another 6,000 were planted by homeowners, businesses and organizations in town.