We drove all the way to Cambo on the north-east tip of Fife at the weekend to buy some snowdrops, the Cambo estate is famous for them, but we declined to pay the £5 each which they were charging people to take a walk around the woods there. As I said to Jack, it might be exciting if you live far from woods, but 10 months ago we moved out of town and now have woods right on our doorstep. As you can see here.
We hadn’t been for a walk through the woods for a couple of weeks as during the really cold frosty weather and snow we cut across the golf course on our morning walk for the paper, there were no golfers to get in the way of, mind you they don’t mind if you do go that way, so long as you wait for them to whack their ball.
So it was a surprise to us when we walked in the woods a couple of days ago and lo and behold – there are snowdrifts of snowdrops in our local woods too. They aren’t open yet, it must be a bit colder at Balbirnie than it is at Cambo, that makes sense as Cambo is close to the coast.
But they were a nice surprise because I had thought that Balbirnie Woods were just well known for rhododendrons.
If you click on the photos you can see them a bit bigger, but the snowdrops are really too wee to make much of an impact, they’re just a lovely sign of the spring to come really.
Below is the pot of snowdrops which I bought at Cambo, a mixture of two different types, I hope they multiply in my garden.
This is the aconite I also bought.
Roll on spring!
A lovely woods walk – and free! Lovely little flowers, too. It’s so exciting to poke around to see what plants and flowers are coming up after a long winter.
Joan,
It’s just such a welcome sign of getting to the end of winter – I hope.
Your woods are so mossy and sprouting green! We are still snow covered and arctic here and won’t see any hint of green until April.
Stefanie,
Your winter is so long, I don’t think I could stand it, but I suppose you are well used to it. Mind you we are more likely to get snow at Easter than at Christmas and if that happens it’s horrible as all the new growth is killed off.
Lovely to see pictures of Balbirnie again. I started my career as a Garden Boy with Jack Chalmers the Head Gardener then. That was 62 years ago. A commercial enterprise was to pick bunches of snowdrops which were sent to the Markets in Edinburgh and Dundee and were on sale in flower shops the following day. We picked 50 snowdrops and put an ivy leaf at two sides of the bunch held in place by an elsastic band. We open saw early honey bees working the flowers. The flowers have a sweet scent in warm sunlight. Not so much in the cold. I now take people to see Scotlands gardens. We saw snowdrops at Findlayston, Dunsky and Cally Woods this year.
Brian Sutherland,
That’s fascinating. Was Balbirnie House owned by a family when you were a Garden Boy there. The daffodils are now just beginning to open, then of course it’ll be the bluebells and rhododendrons. I’ll take more photos then, just in case you drop by my blog again. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Katrina