Tag Archives: Snowdrops

Stowe Gardens – Snowdrops

Blasdale Home Posted on by

19th February 2025

We visited Stowe Gardens for the annual Snowdrop viewing event. Dull day, but not raining. We arrived at opening time and walked down to the park and around one of the lakes. Yes there are snowdrops, but not an impressive numbers. Not as good as last year where we visited the church ast Swyncombe. The grave yard at Swyncombe church has an impressive array.

Despite the limited numbers of Snowdrops, we had a nice walk around, followed by lunch at the NT cafe. The gardens also showed some signs of distress from the winter storms, with a few trees uprooted.

Stowe Park - Snowdrops
Stowe Park - Snowdrops
Stowe Park - Snowdrops
Stowe Park - Snowdrops

Stowe Gardens

Blasdale Home Posted on by

Stowe Gardens during the third lockdown

After the cold and wet weather, we had a break with sun and a warm 12C temperature. We decided to go for a walk in the local area and drove over to Stowe Gardens. It is that time of year, Snowdrop season. R had booked our arrival time online a couple of days before. We arrived and walked down from the car park. The NT shop, restaurant and loos were of course closed. A small van was selling coffee and light lunches at the entrance. (We had already stocked up with Ginsters Cornish pasty from our local shop.)

A longish walk down the hill to the gardens, where our names were checked. The loos were here, a row of Portaloos. We enjoyed a three-hour walk, with a well-deserved lunch break of Pasty. The Snowdrops were somewhat a disappointment, there were clusters of them, but not the huge waves of them there were a few years back.

We met a man and wife taking pictures of the snowdrops with a background of the Temple of Ancient Virtue. He was using a 4×5 Walker Camera. I believe he could adjust the angle of the photographic plate to reduce converging verticles and change the plane of focus. At least he doesn’t have hundreds of images to choose from when doing his final edits.

Stowe Gardens for the Snowdrops

Blasdale Home Posted on by

On a sunny day, we visited Stowe Gardens to view the Snowdrops. We were told the displays were fabulous. On arrival, the car park was brimming with people. Why weren’t people at work, or were we all retired? We headed for the Snowdrops, assured by the NT ticket inspector that the displays were fabulous. We found the Snowdrops, though pretty and of various varieties, we were somewhat underwhelmed by the density of them. There were some nice winter aconites, cyclamens and crocuses planted through the snowdrops.

A walk through some more of the gardens on this bright, cool day, to view the lakes, the Rotunda, the Gothic Temple, Palladian Bridge and the Pebble Alcove with its beautiful crest and motifs outlined in pebbles. R hinted that she fancied one in our garden.

Back at the visitor centre we ate lunch, bought postcards and checked out the secondhand bookshop for some Science Fiction.

Snowdrops at Painswick

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Today started out as a beautiful sunny day, but cold. Rosemary and I decided to visit the Painswick Rococo Garden, which is situated in a hidden Cotswold valley in Painswick near Gloucester.

This time of the year is a special treat with floods of Snowdrops amongst the gardens and woods. After viewing the gardens we had a pub lunch with a pint of Hook Norton.

I took a few photos of the garden while I was there. Hopefully, they will be on the site in a couple of week’s time. I was not alone with my camera, there were several professional photographers taking pictures of the Snowdrop grove.