Snowdrop Sundays – Harbinger of Spring!

Mapperton Gardens will be open on Sunday 19th January, Sunday 2nd February and Sunday 9th  February, 11am – 3pm, for Snowdrop Sundays. Tickets purchased in adance.

Toilet facilities will be open but The Coach House café will be closed (until we reopen for the Season on March 30th). We encourage visitors to bring a flask and picnic and enjoy our outdoor seating to make the most of the day. The Orangery is warm and a delight to sit in with the citrus trees and the tree ferns (dicksonia antarctica and squarrosa) sheltering and the climbing rose, Niphetos, about to flower.

William Wordsworth called the snowdrop a ‘venturous harbinger of Spring’ and visitors who come to Mapperton for Snowdrop Sundays will see sweeps of them in the lower garden.  They will also encounter many hellebores – the Lent lily, Corsican and stinking hellebores – all around. Camellias are coming through especially on the north façade of the house where Bow Bells and the single white camellia are already making a show. The early crocus (thomasinianus) is making a blue carpet under the great Acer Griseum beside the camellias; and daffodils are sneaking out.

Admission is £7.50 per adult (half off our normal garden entry) and under 15s are free.   Tickets must be purchased in advance on our website and there is free parking.

Please note: NO DOGS are allowed in the formal gardens but they are welcome in the grounds of The Coach House.

Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,

Chaste Snow-drop, venturous harbringer

of Spring, And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

‘To a Snow-Drop’ William Wordsworth (1770-1850)