The garden and grounds at Springhill

Beautiful birch bark

The peeling bark and polished stems of many trees bring beauty to the garden at any time of the year, but are never more apparent than during the winter.

These beautiful and elegant trees have bright green delicate leaves and drooping catkins in the spring. But it’s the winter when they really stand out. They have striking richly coloured trunks, which come in shades from snowy whites, silver, brown, gold and russet red.

There are a number of species growing at Springhill planted together in a group to create an ornamental grove. These hardy deciduous trees create a lovely winter feature, each one with its own unique colour and texture of bark.

To make the best of the trunks they are washed with soapy water to remove any green glit, which allows their colours to catch the light as the low winter sun shines through.

Snowdrops at Springhill

The small, white, bell-shaped flowers are a welcoming sight as winter draws to a close. Snowdrops, also known as Galanthus nivalis, are brave little flowers and the colder the weather, the longer they will last, with some flowering into March. Not only are the snowdrops brave enough to cope with whatever the weather throws at them, they are also the masters of subtlety. Their blue-grey spears have perforated the damp earth and their shoots have expanded, releasing their delicate, dangling green and white bells.

Springing up throughout the grounds, the snowdrops can last until the end of February, all depending on the weather which has been very changeable over the last few years.