Winter is grey and depressing in England, but it's blessedly short. By mid-February the days are getting noticeably longer and early bulbs are flowering in profusion.
This weekend was, according to horticultural experts, the height snowdrop season. Hundreds of private gardens up and down the country opened as part of the National Gardens Scheme Snowdrop Festival, while most National Trust properties and major gardens were packed with visitors. The English love snowdrops ... and the excuse to get outside in the improving weather.
I didn't have to drive far to revel in garden glories; North Hampshire has abundant snowdrop possibilities and gorgeous drives between each. I started out at Mottisfont Abbey, a National Trust property better known for the roses in its walled garden in May. But walking around the property in November has its own rewards.
The crystal-clear River Test flows through the property, and the woodland on either side is carpeted with snowdrops.
Ten minutes away are the Harold Hillier Gardens, given to Hampshire County Council by the famous nursery and plant-growing family who are perennial exhibitors at Chelsea. The winter garden here is considered one of the best in the county, showing off how various colours of foliage, bark and winter-blooming flowers can put on a display just as impressive as anything in high summer.
There are plenty of snowdrops here, of course, along with that other staple of the mid-February garden: hellebores.
The most amazing display, however, may have been that put on by the cornus (dogwood). In the standing light of late afternoon sun, the red and orange branches blazed like a bonfire.
Hillier helpfully signposts plants of interest throughout the property. Beyond the specific winter garden, there were broad swathes of crocuses in bloom, beds of iris and a plenty of camellias coming into bloom. And with the trees free of leaves, their trunks put on a display of pattern in bark, moss and lichen.
Sunday I took in a triple play of National Garden Society gardens running in a line west from Winchester. The NGS is a wonderful scheme in which private gardens open for charity. They're vetted by judges before they're allowed in the scheme, must offer basic amenities to visitors and are generally a wonderfully acceptable way to be a voyeur. Most of these properties are well worth poking around. And fantasising about. That's certainly true of Down House, a rambling, tile-shingled house surrounded by vineyards overlooking the River Itchen.
I'd visited here in the autumn, when the formal gardens behind the house are a blaze of colour. But at this time of the year it's all about a woodland garden to one side, carpeted with crocus.
There are snowdrops, of course, along with some early-blooming shrubs.
On to the impossibly pretty little town of Alresford, where if you get lucky you may see the steam train chug by on the Watercress Line on your way to your garden visit.
Brandy Mount House sits just above a main street that hasn't changed much since Jane Austen last passed through. (She lived nearby.)
This isn't a particularly large garden ... none of its edges are any further than an easy stone's throw back to the main house ... but the beds, stone troughs and greenhouses were packed with snowdrops.
This was clearly, amongst all the gardens I visited, the one where the owners were going for variety of species.
There's also a small pond surrounded by ferns, snowdrops, hellebores and dogwood.
My final visit was to Bramdean House. If Alresford feels like Jane Austen should still be walking its streets, Bramdean is the kind of place her heroines would have headed to for a ball. It is the kind of mellow Georgian pile, fronted by wobbly yew hedges and backed by formal lawns sloping up to open countryside, that fuels many an architectural fantasy.
The gardens here are actually quite simple, benefiting from the weathered patina brick walls only get after a century or two.
The gates you see above lead into an orchard heavily underplanted with snowdrops, aconites and crocuses. The grass path leads through a hedge fancifully clipped as round castle walls, up to a garden folly that has the look of a temple. On either side, hurdle walls separate the greenery of the garden from the winter browns of the fields beyond.
While the central axis leading up the hill from the house was quite formal, winding paths down one side cut through a woodland garden, complete with this thatched retreat and more bulbs.
My own garden is still mostly asleep, with just one bunch of hellebores, a single clump of snowdrops and a spray of purple crocuses. While I'll never get to NGS level, it's clear. I need to work on more February interest. One thing's for sure: gardening season is almost here.
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