The National Cherry Blossom Festival starts on March 20 in Washington. Every year millions of pink petals transform the city's landscape, beckoning the start of spring. If you can't make a trip to the capital to see these delicate flowers bloom, enjoy their beauty through these photos taken over the years by CNN iReporters. 
New York resident Navid Baraty visited D.C. to see the cherry blossoms bloom in 2012. This was his first time at the festival and he says it was spectacular. 
The National Cherry Blossom Festival grew from humble beginnings, but now it's one of the largest springtime celebrations in the United States. 
Baraty, a photographer by trade, rarely shoots images of flowers, but he made an exception while at the festival. "I knew it was going to be gorgeous, but wasn't quite prepared for how stunning of a show it really was," he said. 
More than 1.5 million people travel to the capital to see these blooming flowers, according to the National Cherry Blossom Festival's website. 
A crowd walks under blooming cherry blossoms. 
D.C.'s cherry trees have hit their peak as early as March 15 in 1990 to as late as April 18 in 1958. After a brutal winter, they're expected to be at their peak in April this year. 
The cherry blossom festival commemorates the gift of 3,000 cherry trees Japan gave to Washington in 1912. 
2014 marks the 102nd anniversary of the cherry blossom gift from the Japanese. 
The cherry trees' peak bloom, which is when 70% of the trees are blooming, is very much dependent on the weather. 
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial sits behind a blooming cluster of cherry blossoms. 
The National Park Service expects peak bloom to occur this year during the second week of April. 
In 1915, the United States government presented the people of Japan with flowering dogwood trees. The gift was in response to the cherry trees the United States received from Japan three years earlier. 
Cherry blossoms are a familiar springtime sight for Neal Piper, who lives in D.C. He took these photos in March 2013. He was disappointed the blossoms bloomed a lot later than usual last year because of cold weather. 
Here, the cherry blossoms overlook the Tidal Basin in Washington. 
When Piper took these photographs, the Washington Monument was under repair. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake caused cracks in the monument in 2011, according to the National Park Service. 
The cherry blossom season can last as long as 25 days. 
In the early 1980s, the United States government gave Japanese horticulturists some cuttings of cherry trees after a flood in Japan decimated many of the trees there. 
Cherry blossoms bloom in a variety of countries during spring. You can find these delicate flowers in the United States, Japan, Germany, India and even Turkey, just to name a few nations this flowering plant calls home. 
Travelers enjoy the sight of cherry blossoms so much that crowds start gathering in the park as early as sunrise, which is when Ian Dixon captured this photograph in March 2012. "Even at 7 a.m. it was getting tough to find good spots to shoot from due to all the photographers around," he said.
- The National Cherry Blossom Festival starts March 20
- This is one of the largest spring festivals in the United States
- More than one million people travel to Washington to see these blooming flowers
What does spring look like for you? Share your photos with CNN iReport.
(CNN) -- Our winter blues are about to turn pink! This year's National Cherry Blossom Festival starts in Washington on Thursday. The annual event attracts more than a million people from across the country and abroad. The festival is starting on the first day of spring, as always, but peak bloom is predicted to be later this season because of the brutal winter in the D.C. area.
"We're really excited to welcome spring with all this winter weather," said Danielle Davis, a festival spokeswoman.
The National Park Service says peak bloom, the day when 70% of the blossoms of the Yoshino cherry trees around the Tidal Basin are open, is forecast to fall between April 8 and 12. The average peak bloom date for the past 21 years has been March 31.
As one of the largest springtime festivals in the United States, the start of cherry blossom season may finally mean old man winter is retiring for the year. If you can't make a trip to the nation's capital to see these delicate flowers, then you're in luck, because we've got a collection of beautiful blossom photos from previous years to share with you. (See the gallery in high resolution here.)
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