We all want to be individual and stand out from the crowd but in the garden world not all the flowers associated with spring are big individual show-offs, sometimes it’s about teaming up with your neighbours. Snowdrops, daffodils, aconites, crocus, cyclamen …can be truly breath-taking and awe inspiring on mass.
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Gardens in Cornwall have seen an increase of 33% more blooms than last year and Devon have gone up by 31%
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Saltram closely followed by Knightshayes in Devon both have the most blooms out in any National Trust garden in the South West.
National Trust garden teams have once again been out and about counting blooms for the annual Valentine’s Day Flower Count and are heralding the very beginnings of spring. 2,287 plants are blooming in this year’s 13th annual Valentine’s Flower count, 32% up on last year’s figure of 1,737, although numbers are down on 2016 where the south west saw 2,644 blooms. Both Cornwall and Devon have seen an increase this year with 33% & 31% more blooms despite the recent cold snap.
Where can you see the most varieties of flowers?
For the third year running, Saltram had the highest number of flowers recorded with 214 blooms up from 176 blooms in 2017 and Knightshayes had the second highest amount of flowers in bloom with 154 plants recorded, up from 101 in 2017.
Despite the increase in plants in bloom, this year it feels like there has been a little rebalancing and some of the flowers we have seen pushing seasonal boundaries and flowering ever earlier in previous years, are this year still tightly wrapped in their buds, and who can blame them with the recent cold snap.