In the midst of winter with its low grey skies, the scents and colours of embryonic spring are a welcome morale booster. These gardens will offer spectacular views over the coming months, as banks of delicate snowdrops, and armies of budding daffs, bluebells and tulips return.
Castle Howard, North Yorkshire
Early purple crocuses line the drive before a huge wave of daffodils rolls down the lawn at Castle Howard, 15 miles north of York, from February until April (often peaking around Easter). From early spring, peacocks show off their new tail feathers, grape hyacinths bloom in the old rose garden and cowslips freckle the banks in Ray Wood. There are paths through the woodland under early blossom and bright green leaves. The woods explode into colour from late April, with bluebells and neon rhododendrons. Skelf Island adventure playground opened in 2019 and there are several cafes across the huge grounds, serving locally farmed produce such as the estate’s own sausages.
From £9/£4.50. Gardens and grounds open daily, castlehoward.co.uk
Borde Hill, West Sussex
With a self-guided spring trail through citrus-fragrant magnolia and flamboyant camellias, Borde Hill is a hidden gem. Five thousand February Gold narcissi have been newly planted for 2024 and there’s a cafe in the old Peacock House. Horticulturalist Colonel Stephenson Robert Clarke began to create the garden when he bought the estate in 1893. He paid plant hunters to find seeds for Chinese tulip trees and white-flowered lacebarks from New Zealand so that visitors are transported around the world as they walk through it. Fragrant Chinese honeysuckle, dawn arrowwoods and lots more are flowering in early spring. From a formal Italian garden, where pine and eucalyptus are reflected in the lily pond, paths lead through subtropical ferns and palm trees to the wilder rhododendron garden, with its Himalayan hybrids, some blooming from March.
£12 adult/£8 child, free for Historic Houses members. Open daily from 10 February, bordehill.co.uk
RHS Hyde Hall, Essex
The 15,000 snowdrop bulbs that were planted in Hyde Hall’s winter garden in 2017 have spread and multiplied into delicate white carpets under glowing midwinter fire dogwood stems and varied evergreens, all looking great in February. Winding paths lead through a sensory smörgåsbord of textured bark, luminous birch trunks and fragrant shrubs. Crocuses and aconites fringe the Upper Pond with its hilltop views across Essex, with trees including early flowering cherries and magnolia in bloom from about March.
£15.85/£7.95, RHS members free. Open daily, rhs.org.uk
Pensthorpe, Norfolk
This 280-hectare (700-acre) wildlife-rich nature reserve in the Wensum Valley has a sculpture trail through the wetlands, wildflower meadows and bird hides. It’s also home to cranes, flamingos, huge playgrounds, an aviary full of avocets, and five themed gardens. The Millennium garden, designer Piet Oudolf’s first public UK project, planted it in 1999, is studded with winter seedheads and ornamental grasses such as purplish feather reeds and spiky sea holly, which are vibrant throughout spring too. A newer addition to the reserve, the Corten Infinity garden, includes banana palms and a huge rusted-steel centrepiece. The Wave Garden, designed by Chelsea Flower Show winner Julie Toll, features lake views and undulating yew hedges, snowflakes and scented white narcissi.
Seasonal prices from £10.95/£9.95. Open daily, pensthorpe.com
Eltham Palace, London
These English Heritage gardens in south-east London have wafts of wintersweet and the spiced vanilla scent of viburnum lasting into March. Banks of cream and crimson hellebores, sky-blue scilla and numerous early bulbs frame the striped walls of the palace – there is always something flowering, with a climax in late spring. You walk into the garden over one of London’s oldest functional bridges; Geoffrey Chaucer (of Canterbury Tales fame) supervised the building works. Inside the medieval palace is an art deco extravaganza with circular hall and gold mosaic bathroom.
£14.50/£8.60, free for English Heritage members. Open weekends, every day during February half-term, and then Wednesday-Sunday, englishheritage.org.uk
Seaton Deleval Hall, Northumberland
The gardens at this atmospheric National Trust property about 10 miles north of Newcastle were recently restored to frame the dramatic shell of architect John Vanbrugh’s final, finest house. The formal Italianate parterre has curving box hedges, manicured whitebeams, a fountain and stone urns. There are February snowdrops in the wilder woods, aconites in the borders, excellent coastal walks nearby and a direct bus from Newcastle.
£10/£5. Open Wednesday to Sunday, nationaltrust.org.uk
Winterbourne House, Birmingham
This is an Edwardian villa in Birmingham’s pretty Edgbaston suburb. Gertrude Jekyll’s books inspired Margaret Nettlefold to design the Arts and Crafts-style grounds with their walled garden, narcissus-bordered nut walk, bridge, stream and pergola, blooming from February into April. There are magnolias, rhododendrons and a sinuous new winter garden down some steps from the lawn, with honeysuckles, twisted hazels and early spring bulbs.
£8/£6.90. Open daily, winterbourne.org.uk
Attadale Gardens, Wester Ross
Spring comes late in the Highlands. When these gardens open at Easter, daffodils, primroses and catkins are pale-gold harbingers of the bold candelabra primulas, irises, lilies and azaleas that will flower in the weeks that follow. Attadale won RHS Partner Garden of the Year for Scotland in 2023. The gardens are full of intriguing details: a spectacular tree fern in a sunken fern garden, bronze birds and animals, bridges, thickets of bamboo and, after the spring rains, seasonal waterfalls over mossy, creeper-covered cliffs. Tree-framed views from the garden include the jagged hills of Skye from a rocky outcrop up some stone steps at the end of the rhododendron walk, with some blooms from late March.
Adult £10, under-16s free. Open daily from 28 March, attadalegardens.com
Dunham Massey, Greater Manchester
One of the UK’s biggest winter gardens is already brightening the darkest months at Dunham Massey, not far from Manchester. Scarlet and ochre stems of dogwood and willow flame above snowdrops and early narcissi. They are joined from about March by starry blue scilla and Glory-of-the-snow. Dunham Massey’s gardeners planted more than 40,000 extra spring bulbs last year. New daffodil varieties include bold early-flowering January Silvers and striking, vivid-yellow Jetfires. Light pours into the 18th-century orangery and fallow deer, wandering through medieval parkland, start to shed their antlers.
£8.50/£4.25, free for NT members. Gardens open daily, nationaltrust.org.uk
Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall
Heligan’s huge pink-and-cream magnolia flowers are among the blooms used to calculate the prompt arrival of the Cornish spring. February is already bursting with pastel camellias and lipstick-bright rhododendrons. There are yellow primroses and early daffs in the woodland under dangling catkins, delicate purple crocuses round the pond and blossom in the Peach House. £18.50/£8.50. Open daily, heligan.com
Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd
The sloping gardens around this towering neo-Norman citadel are older than the castle itself. The watery bog garden and fuchsia pergola, the walled garden with its red and yellow tulips, rhododendron walk, and bluebell-blanketed hillsides under ornamental blossom make this an enchanting April destination. Before then, there are wafts of tequila-pungent witch hazel and glossy sweet box, tiny daffs and impressive views through bare trees to the long coast and the white-capped mountains of Eryri (Snowdonia).
£15/£7.50. Gardens open at weekends and daily from February 12, castle reopens 1 March, nationaltrust.org.uk
Glenarm Castle, County Antrim
Winner of Historic Houses Garden of the Year for 2023, Glenarm Castle’s grounds build through waves of spring flowering to a tulip festival in early May with fritillaries nodding their chequered heads from April. In the 1820s, the Countess of Antrim created the four-acre walled garden, pineapple-producing glasshouse and huge circular yew hedge. There are coastal views and a woodland walk, where red squirrels hide above rhododendrons and camellias before the white flowers of wild garlic flood the forest floor.
£10/£8.50, HHA and RHS members free. Open daily from 17 March, glenarmcastle.com
