On April 1 the first ever Spring Flower Festival will get underway. Organised by Discover Scottish Gardens, it’s a celebration of the season and gardens and estates across the country will be holding on-line events and taking virtual walks through meadows, woodland and cultivated spaces as a way of sharing the flowers that are appearing every day.

Gardens will be welcoming in visitors from their local areas and if Lockdown rules relax further, then more people will be able to enjoy the beauty of spring before the Festival comes to a close on May 31.

Catherine Erskine, Chair, Discover Scottish Gardens, says: “Last spring was one of the most beautiful that many people could remember and it helped to sustain us all during a very difficult time. This year spring in all its beauty and exuberance has arrived to buoy our spirits once again and the Festival is a way of helping to ensure that the season doesn’t pass us by unnoticed.”

Discover Scottish Gardens is a network of more than 400 gardens, estates, nurseries and garden centres so check the website www.discoverscottishgardens.org for Festival updates and to find out if there is participating garden in your area were you can enjoy spring in all its glory.

Meanwhile here is a selection of signature spring plants and some of the places where they grow best.

Primula
One look is all it takes to discern how the candelabra primula got its name. The tall stems that rise from a rosette of leaves bear whorls of flowers in colours from white, fiery orange and magenta. These are the most dramatic flowers in a plant family that includes primroses, cowslips and auriculas, most of which grow best in dappled shade in humous-rich soil or along stream sides where their roots are kept damp all year round.

Primulas spread by seed and division and so they can spread out to form large clumps, or pop up from where they have seeded themselves. While primroses and cowslips are native to Scotland, the latter preferring the drier conditions of the east coast, many of the most spectacular primulas come from Himalayan regions and the chillier parts of Europe, and while Alpine auriculas can withstand severe cold, they need to be protected from damp weather.

Attadale in Wester Ross has a fine collection of the sorts of primulas that like to have their feet wet, growing in the woodlands, seeding themselves into mossy grass and spreading out along the water gardens that lead to Attadale House.

Attadale, Strathcarron, Wester Ross IV54 8YX

Scottish Gardener: PrimulaPrimula

Fritillary
Fritillaries can be found around the Mediterranean, across Asia and America and in on high plateaus in Iran the king of the tribe, the Imperial fritillary, grows in such abundance that whole valleys are filled with their foxy-smelling orange and yellow flowers. But it is the humble Fritillary meleagris, or ‘Snakeshead fritillary, which is native to damp meadows in mild parts of the UK, that is most prized here. These small flowers, just 20cm tall, produce nodding bells of checked flowers in dark purple, although occasionally a pure white specimen will appear among them.

Left undisturbed, snakeshead fritillaries will gradually spread out into carpets of delicate flowers.

You can find them growing at Cluny House, a woodland garden that overlooks the Tay valley near Aberfeldy. All kinds of spring plants grow here including blue poppies and erythroniums and in April various kinds of clematis clamber into rhododendrons, which also grow in abundance here.

Cluny House, Aberfeldy, Perthshire PH15 2JT

Scottish Gardener: FritillaryFritillary

Tulip
If there’s one flower more than any other that shouts ‘spring’ then it has to be the tulip. With more than 3,000 registered varieties, the issue for gardeners is which ones to choose. These range from small species tulips, unchanged from when they were first picked from rocky places in Central Asia, to the vivid flowers on tall stems that are a tribute to the Dutch breeders who have been obsessed with the flower since it first reached Amsterdam along the silk route. Tulips need free-draining soil and will rot if grown in heavy clay so the sandy soil within the walled garden of Gordon Castle near Fochabers provides the ideal conditions to grow thousands of tulips for a dramatic spring display. The walled garden has been restored to a design by world famous Arne Maynard and the tulips and other flowers that are grown here are sold as cut flowers in the cafe.

Gordon Castle Walled Garden, Fochabers, Morayshire IV32 7PQ

Scottish Gardener: TulipTulip

Magnolia
When the waxy flowers of the magnolia appear on bear branches it is a sign that spring is underway. There are around 100 species and countless of cultivars and most thrive in damp, acidic conditions. Some bear large, goblet-shaped flowers in white and pink while others, such as Magnolia stellata, are smothered in star-shaped white blooms. The cool, damp climate of Scotland is ideal for growing magnolias and while the flowers are sometimes damaged by frost the trees themselves can withstand cold temperatures and emerge unscathed. More lethal than temperature is the threat that their shallow root system can become damaged, so care has to be taken when mowing around them.

Glenarn near Helensburgh is home to many fine magnolias. This garden, which has been 40 years in the making, is renowned for rhododendrons but it contains some of the largest magnolias in Scotland and visitors can look up into their branches while surrounded by bulbs.

Glenarn, Glenarn Road, Rhu, Argyll G84 8LL

Scottish Gardener: MagnoliaMagnolia

Daffodil
When William Wordsworth penned his famous poem, he was exalting the delights of the wild daffodil, Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Today there are thousands of different varieties, many of them developed for gardeners or for the cut flower trade, but collectors still covet the wild kinds and the early daffodils that were bred from the Victorian era to the 1930s, when breeders in Scotland were responsible for producing some of the finest new varieties. You can see species daffodils at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where Lent Lilies, as the Wordsworth kind are also called, not only grow through grass but where jonquils flourish in the glasshouses and the delicate Narcissus cyclamineus has colonised the Rock Garden. It’s an opportunity to enjoy the subtle charms of species of daffodil and discover how they can be used to enliven different areas of any garden.

RBGE, Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR

Scottish Gardener: DaffodilDaffodil

Bluebell
In the midst of a wood filled with bluebells, its not the sheet of vivid blue colour that most engages the senses, but the scent. This after all is the wild hyacinth, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, and the fragrance is truly memorable. Bluebells love damp woodland where the canopy closes over in summer to keep the bulbs moist, but it is during that brief spell in spring, when light still filters to the woodland floor and the flowers open on bent stems, that they put on their staggering display. They thrive in the extensive woodlands of Castle Kennedy near Stranraer where they appear before ferns and bracken grow up to cover them. Castle Kennedy is home to huge magnolias and towering rhododendrons, making it an exciting garden to visit in spring, but while the are in flower it is the bluebells that steal the show.

Castle Kennedy, Rephad, Stranraer DG9 8BX

Scottish Gardener: BluebellBluebell