Celebrate snowdrop season with 6 of the best places to see them

There’s something about a snowdrop that really lifts your heart. These delicate flowers are traditionally known as the harbingers of spring and can usually be seen from January until March.

You’ll spot them carpeting woodland floors, meadows and gardens and in the UK we absolutely love them – they regularly top the polls as the nation’s favourite spring flower.

So we’re celebrating snowdrop season, with some of the best places to see them and tips from an expert gardener on how to grow them in your garden.

The best places to see snowdrops

The National Trust is celebrating snowdrops in 2025 with walks, talks and workshops at it’s properties across the UK.

We’ve got six of the best spots to visit.

1. Acorn Bank, Cumbria 

Spring is on the way at Acorn Bank near Penrith, where a spectacular display of snowdrops takes over the woodland above the historic Crowdundle Beck.

Acorn Bank is usually closed during the winter and this delightful sight is usually off-limits to visitors – but this year they’re running snowdrop weekends throughout February and March.

It’s the perfect opportunity to wander through these drifts and dainty flowers and soak up the spring atmosphere.

2. Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire

There is a dedicated Snowdrop Stories trail through the grounds of this Tudor manor house between 3 February to 21 March 2025, where you’ll learn all about the beliefs and superstitions that have been associated with these spring blooms over the centuries.

It’s worth a visit at anytime during snowdrop season to see the flowers throughout the estate.

3. Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire

Anglesey Abbey, near Cambridge, has one of the finest snowdrop collections in the UK, with 400 varieties of these delicate white flowers – many of which are rare.

You can take in their beauty with a wander through the Winter Garden, which is also in its prime at this time of year, or join a free Specialist Collection Tour between 27 January and 28 Februrary 2025 where you can learn all about this fascinating collection of flowers.

4. Dunster Castle and Watermill, Somerset

The 28 acres of parkland around Dunster Castle is the perfect setting for an idyllic winter walk, with patches of snowdrops dotted all around the area, as well as growing in the garden borders.

You can join the gardeners to plant more snowdrops in the River Gardens at a drop-in session on 15 February 2025. 

5. Oxburgh Estate, Norfolk

Thousands of snowdrops carpet the woodland floor at the National Trust’s Oxburgh Estate, putting on a memorable display in the Wilderness – an untamed, natural landscape which was created to contrast the more formal gardens. Spring brings a memorable display of snowdrops, followed by aconites and bluebells. 

Guided snowdrop tours are offered throughout January, February and March 2025, where you can discover different snowdrop varieties.

6. Belton Estate, Lincolnshire

Each year at Belton over 20,000 snowdrops can be seen in drifts throughout the Pleasure Grounds, around the Gothic ruin and dotted around the lakes.

If a guided tour isn’t your thing, Belton offers a self-led tour allowing you to explore the snowdrop hot spots at your own pace. And if you’ve got grandkids to entertain this half-term, Belton runs snowdrop-inspired crafts to keep little hands busy this spring.

Tips for planting and growing snowdrops

Ben Dark is a head gardener and landscape historian. He has these great tips for growing snowdrops in your garden.

• Transplant snowdrops when dormant in early summer or ‘in the green’ with leaves attached just after flowering.
• Snowdrops will happily grow in pots. Look for a mossy, north-facing corner of your garden that never quite dries out and store the containers there when not in flower. Water occasionally.
• The small bulbs dry out quickly, so if planting in autumn get them in the ground on arrival.
• To help bulk them up, consider watering them with diluted tomato feed when in leaf.
• Divide congested clumps every three years for space and to help them spread.

Popular varieties of snowdrop

Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’

Tall and highly scented. Lovely in the garden, even better in the vase.

Galanthus ‘Hill Poë’

A classic double snowdrop discovered in Ireland in 1911 and yet to be bettered.

Galanthus nivalis Sandersii Group

From Northumbria, a golden snowdrop with the best chance of naturalising in gardens.

Galanthus ‘Magnet’

Elegant with long outer tepals, arched flower stalk and thin green-grey leaves.

Galanthus reginae-olgae

A snowdrop for the impatient gardener, it can begin flowering in late October.

Where did snowdrops come from?

The snowdrop’s nodding white flower, each carried on a single stem is a welcome sight in the early months of the year.

Yet it’s not a native plant and wasn’t recorded as growing wild until the late 18th century. Dark explains that Snowdrops belong to the genus Galanthus; the naturalised species is Galanthus nivalis.

“Its arrival on these islands from central and southern Europe is unrecorded, though it may have come with the Romans,” he says.

“It was certainly familiar to John Gerard, who included the snowdrop in Britain’s first ever gardening book, writing in the Herball of 1597 that it ‘flowereth at the beginning of Januarie’.”

Snowdrops have journeyed to the UK from across the globe

“In the mid-19th century it was joined by Galanthus plicatus, carried here as bulbs by soldiers returning from the Crimean War. Many had spent the winter under bombardment outside the besieged city of Sevastopol and clung to the flowers that bloomed in the mud of their frozen trenches as reminders of life.

“The final piece of our snowdrop puzzle was added in 1874 when botanist Henry John Elwes brought back the giant snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii, from the Caucasus Mountains. While another 17 species have so far been discovered, it is these three that contribute most of the genetic material to the hundreds of varieties available today.”