Depending on where you live in eastern Maine and how far you wish to travel to take a bus to Boston for one of springtime’s most enjoyable happenings — the New England Flower Show — you can get there from here.

In fact, two groups offer you a chance to visit “Secrets of the Garden” March 11 at the Bayside Expo Center.

These trips not only refresh your senses, they help replenish the treasuries of two community organizations which make life better for all of us.

Those of you closest to Bangor may travel with the Bangor Garden Club. Those of you to the south may choose to ride with the Glen Cove Garden Club.

However you travel, you will view 40 garden exhibits, stroll by 250 commercial vendors’ booths, and enjoy 600 amateur exhibits in this 5 1/2-acre show sponsored by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

Sandra Doughty reports the Bangor Garden Club has opened its trip to the public for $51 per person, which covers travel and admission to the show. Meals are not included, but stops will be made for lunch and supper.

Funds raised through this trip help purchase flowers for the Bangor Public Library, Cascade Park, Bangor Historical Society, Hose 5 Fire Museum, and gardens at area health facilities. The funds also cover youth camperships and other civic contributions. For reservations, call Doughty at 942-4711.

The Glen Cove Garden Club hopes to fill two buses. Their fee is $44 each for transportation and admission. A supper stop, at your own expense, is planned for the return trip.

These buses leave at 6:45 a.m., one from the Camden IGA parking lot, and the other from the parking lot behind the Mid-Coast Eye Center in Rockland.

Stops will be made at 6:55 a.m. at the Rockland Recreational Center; at 7:05 a.m. at the Thomaston Post Office; and 7:15 a.m. at Spofford’s in Waldoboro.

Travel with the Glen Cove Garden Club funds scholarships for students pursuing horticultural careers and helps the club maintain the Blue Star Marker in Glen Cove and contribute to the Coastal Mountain Land Trust.

Reservations can be made with Laura Gregory, 594-5090; Dorothy Rausch, 594-9318; or Josephine Sulin, 236-8739.

If you have never attended a flower show of this magnitude, it is an experience not to be missed. Bring a camera. Folks back home might not believe your descriptions of unusual plants and plantings that are truly works of art.

We have more information on the Valentine’s Dance from 8 p.m. to midnight Feb. 14 at the Bangor Civic Center, benefiting the Bangor chapter of Habitat for Humanity. There is an additional way you can help our local chapter build another home for families in need.

Nancy Dawson of ERA-Dawson Bradford Realtors told us that through the efforts of Gary Arsenault and Will Rogers of Realty Executives, the National Board of Realtors has agreed to match each dollar raised at the dance.

Dawson is pleased her fellow realtors agreed to approach the national board for this benefit because the project means a lot to her family. Her father, Robbie Spiers, is the building director for the local chapter.

“We want people to know they can help Habitat for Humanity even if they don’t go to the dance,” she said. “We will gladly accept donations, in any amount, which the National Board of Realtors will match.”

Tickets for the dance, featuring Big Chief & the Continentals, are $15 each and available at Libby’s Hallmark Shop and The Grasshopper Shop. But you can also help Habitat for Humanity, with a donation in any amount, by calling Dawson at 947-6788.

Ellen Ingersoll of Brewer is sorry so many people missed the Brewer High School Winter Concert in December.

“What a joy to see so many of our students singing, playing instruments and directing the program,” she wrote the Bangor Daily News.

“This requires many hours of training by the students and their directors.”

Ingersoll extends “a special thank you” to string ensemble and chorus director Amanda Cushman, jazz band and concert band director Brady Harris, and “a great big thank you to the principal and faculty at Brewer High School.”

We have a correction to our story last week about the proposed climbing wall for the new Mount Desert Island YMCA. The MDI YMCA does not currently have a climbing program associated with Acadia Hospital. Kate Doyle called to explain she mentioned that program as an “exemplary climbing program for Youth-at-Risk, which is the type of program we hope to implement” when the new facility opens.

The Standpipe, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.