Field and indoor experiments demonstrated that conifer progenies possess a memory of temperature and photoperiod during female flowering and seed development, expressed in the timing of vegetative processes and frost hardiness, while these memory effects persist at least several years. To find out whether such carryover effects can also be provoked by climatic conditions during germination and early growth, we organized a nursery experiment where different Norway spruce and European larch provenances (10 and 12, respectively) were grown in two climatically contrasting nurseries and were reciprocally transplanted after the first year. Budburst phenology was scored 2 years after replanting. In Norway spruce, plants grown during the first year at the warm site consistently flushed later in both nurseries than those grown under cold climate, the difference ranged between 2.6 and 7.1 days for different provenances. In European larch, this was true only for plants scored in the warm nursery. In the cold nursery, the transferred material of low-altitude provenances flushed earlier but that of high-altitude provenances flushed later than the non-transferred plants of the same provenance. Plants also exhibited differences in budburst duration, which again were not consistent between species and provenances. The presented results give a strong indication for an epigenetic basis of the observed shifts in spring phenology, which may be important for nursery management, reforestation and afforestation.