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Do you like snowdrops?

If your reply was yes, then I recommend a visit to East Lambrook Manor Gardens in Somerset.

As a part of a new series looking at various gardens to visit throughout the seasons of the year, we visited this garden while we were away on holiday last week.

East Lambrook Manor has been a garden that I have wanted to visit for a long time.

Margery Fish’s garden style is seen as a true example of English cottage gardening, with many gardeners eager to learn from her experience and plant expertise, adding to their garden designs.

In her book ‘A Flower For Every Day’ first published in 1964, Graham Rice who wrote the book’s foreword in 2000, described Margery’s gardening style as -

‘She believed that even in gardens of relatively modest size and limited resources, plants should, and could, be chosen to provide flowers and a fascinating garden prospect on every day of the year.’

(Quote from A Flower For Every Day, Author Margery Fish, Foreword by Graham Rice, year 2000,  B.T Batsford)

As our gardens get smaller, we can apply these same principles in our gardens today.

This garden holds a specialist collection of snowdrops and geraniums.

There have been three new varieties of snowdrops discovered since the year 2000 with the wonderfully named –

• Galanthus Dodo Norton in 2000,
• Galanthus Lambrook Greensleeves in 2001
• and last but not least the Galanthus Sir Henry B-C in 2006

Garden details:

Entry price – £4.50.  RHS Members – Free (February, March, September, October)

Opening times – 10 am – 5 pm

Everyday throughout February and May- 17^th July

Tuesday – Saturday throughout March – April and 20^th July – October

Please check with them before you travel

Disabled Access – It has limited disabled access as it is a small garden with small paths and has a terraced and gravel areas. The area known as the Ditch and woodland area is suitable for wheelchairs and those with limited mobility. They have a detailed disability access statement, for those wishing to know more.

There is also a unisex disabled toilet.

Plant Nursery they have a small plant shop, with a variety of plants grown in the garden.

Parking there is a free car park across a small road in front of the gardens, with some disabled spaces.

Eating facilities there is a small café that offers coffee, fruit juices and cake.

There is a wonderful pub  - The Rose and Crown which is 5 mins walk away which offers a warm, friendly service with a wonderful menu that has options for gluten free, vegetarian and vegan meals.

I had  a yummy cauliflower, broccoli and cheese bake and Matt had what he calls the best steak and kidney pie he has ever had!

Review

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the garden. We were fortunate in that the weather was also lovely after a week of rain and snow. The collection of snowdrops was wonderful to see, and to be able to learn about the many different varieties made the visit even more special.

We loved the Galanthus Nivalis Blewbury Tart

and the pretty Galanthus Primrose Walburg that had yellow ovary (The section at the top of the flower head).

If you want to learn more about snowdrops, then I highly recommend this garden.

It’s not a garden to see thousands of snowdrops, but one that shows these beautiful plants in the best light.  It’s not really a garden for young children as it is a small specialist garden, with small paths.

Due to the cold weather we have been having, snowdrops have been quite late this year, so there is still time to admire this beauty.

There was also a magnificent display of crocuses on the manor’s front lawn, so don’t miss this lovely display surrounding the tree.

As this is a specialist plants garden, this garden deserves a visit throughout the seasons of the year.

They are in the middle of restoring the gardens, so we are looking forward to seeing the changes over time.

We will be back for a return visit.

Garden address:

East Lambrook Manor Gardens,

South Petherton,

Somerset

TA13 5HH

Multi-map

I was recently given a flip video as a birthday present and I will be using it to show highlights of our garden visits.

I have put together a small video to give you a little insight into what you can expect from the garden. I apologise for the video as it’s my first attempt (I got a bit carried away with the word variety LOL, and hoping to improve the quality) but I hope it is useful to you.

Tags: East Lambrook Manor Garden, Flower For Every Day, Galanthus, Gardens, Gardens to visit, Home & Garden, Royal Horticultural Society, Somerset, Somerset Gardens, South Petherton

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 2:27 am and is filed under Gardens to visit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.