Answer (Dec 26, 2012): Where is this?

Quick answer:  This flowery crest is in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and is taken from the Belvédère (a very nice restaurant where I had dinner), and is located at 51° 50' 51.97" N 5° 52' 21.95" E.

  

Well… you should know by now that Search-by-Image doesn’t always work.  In this case, since it was a picture I’d taken (and NOT posted anywhere), it was pretty unlikely to match in a Search-by-Image attempt.  Still, since that’s such a quick thing to do, it’s a worthwhile first attempt. 

Since SBI didn’t work out, the next thing you might try could be

["coat of arms" garden flowers]

and then filter by the color orange.  However, that doesn’t work well because there’s too little orange in this images.  There’s also no guarantee that they plant the same color flowers from year-to-year.  

Filter by orange... too limiting... 

There IS LOTS of green, though, and that’s going to be constant from year-to-year.  So let’s filter by that color.  If you do an Image search with

["coat of arms" garden flowers]

and then filter by the color green to find a nice image ( Flickr image ) in the 8th row of images.  Note that the Flickr photo gives the location as Nijmegen.  (This picture also shows the Latin name of the city: “Noviomagus,” which if searched-for leads you back to Nijmegen.) 

It's pretty simple to use Maps.Google.com to jump to Nijmegen, Netherlands, then search in there for Belvedere (with or without the accents) and find the location:  

 And when you switch to satellite view, it's pretty obvious that this is the place: 

Other approaches:  If you just search for

[ coat of arms flowers ]

without any color filtering, there’s a decent picture of the floral display around row 20.  You just have to be persistent to find this image without filtering. 

Another thing you can do is to use the Photos layer in Google Maps to get higher quality photos that show you this really is the correct place.  

You can click on the Maps icon (upper right) and then select "Photos" to see images that are geo-located here from Panoramio.  

Search lessons: Several people reported finding this one quite difficult.  Almost everyone who put in the term “coat of arms” was able to find it without much trouble. But what if you don’t know that’s what it’s called?  Then you have to learn as you go… and pick up likely looking search terms as you work through similar images.  

Have a great end-of-year celebration!  See you in 2013. 

Searching onward!