Brrr! It's just far too cold for spring to come Marching in

But while the clocks may be going forward this weekend, the city's parks and gardens will need around a fortnight to catch up.

The coldest March weather for nearly 20 years has delayed the onset of spring by two weeks, according to experts from the Royal Botanic Garden and the city's parks department.

And they forecast a dramatic eruption of colour over the next few weeks as temperatures climb back to the seasonal average.

In contrast to this time last year, when Edinburgh basked in unseasonably warm weather - 17C on March 22 - average temperatures for this month have so far hovered just under 2C, compared with the normal March average of 4C.

Iain Park, the city's parks manager, said residents could look forward to a dramatic floral display by the end of this month or early April.

"Within the next few weeks, I would expect a riot of colour in the city, especially with the daffodils, in places like the foot of Castle Rock and the London Road gardens.

"Usually, at this time of year around Mother's Day, we get lots of people swarming about our parks picking daffodils, but obviously they won't be able to do that this year yet."

At the Royal Botanic Garden, horticulture experts carefully monitor signs of spring each year under a long-established initiative called the Phenology Project, which examines seasonal changes in plants.

One of the project leaders, Pete Brownless, who is a garden supervisor at the Inverleith attraction, said there had been an early burst of growth from some plants due to milder weather at the turn of the year, but added that the usual gradual advent of spring had been held back by the recent cold snap. He added: "This year, things are slightly later at the moment, largely because we are having such a cold March.

"The daffodils seem to be quite late. There's a clump here that I walk past every morning that seem to have been in bud for ages now. Next week we will see lots of things thinking 'spring has come, so we should burst into colour now'."

Mr Brownless said that Scotland had been experiencing a more continental seasonal shift.

"In places like mainland Europe and the States, what happens is winter stops, spring happens and then summer starts. Here, it's a land of perpetual spring in some ways. But because we are a maritime climate stuck out in the Atlantic, we are very susceptible to whatever the Atlantic fronts do."

Flowers to spot in the Botanics over the next short while, Mr Brownless said, include pulmonaria, a close relative of borage which was used by medieval herbalists to treat lung conditions.

Despite the cold snap, weather experts said there was no connection with climate change patterns.

John Hammond from the Met Office pointed out that around this time last year, Edinburgh was basking in unseasonably warm weather for March.

"Edinburgh had some balmy weather, so it was quite a contrast. But although it certainly has been a colder and drier March than we've seen for a few years, you can't relate it to climate change."

He added that the coming days would see a spell of milder, but also wilder weather, with wind, showers and temperatures approaching double figures by early next week.