Enjoy a springtime walk at Chippenham Park Gardens, one of the finest Cambridgeshire gardens for daffodils and tulips.
- Hugo
- Mar 11
- 3 min read
As the swathes of snowdrops begin to fade we have started to edge into the spring garden season. The days have become milder and the nights are getting shorter and the gardens have been responding to these spring triggers: Leaf and flower buds are fattening and some are unfurling and opening. The first bumble bees are out of their hibernation and are rather sleepily bouncing around looking for pollen and nectar. These are the queens that have been overwintering. They emerge, as the days get warmer in early March, from holes in the ground or an old flowerpot at the back the potting shed, ready to start foraging the emerging spring flowers.
For us at Chippenham Park Gardens, springtime is mostly associated with daffodils, which were planted en masse a generation or more ago and cover an impressive area creating the perfect springtime walk. They have naturalised in large numbers and seem to enjoy the sunny, open aspect of the lawns around the house and lake and the free-draining soil. If you want them to proliferate and flower reliably year-on-year it is important to allow them to completely die-back before cutting them in early June. This year we planted a few thousand more daffodils, mostly slightly later-flowering, fragrant varieties such as Narcissus Thalia, Princess Zaide, Poeticus and Actaea to extend this spectacular spring garden favourite.
But whilst the Daffodils will try to steal the limelight, there are many other wonderful springtime flowers to enjoy at the same time. The first fragrant viburnum flowers are about to burst open. The common Viburnum tinus is pretty, already has buds of pink opening to white but not a patch on it’s sexier, deciduous and highly fragrant relatives such as Viburnum carlesii, burkwoodii, x bodnantense and x carlcephalum. All of these can be found in our spring gardens flowering along the edge of the lake and in ‘Adrian’s Walk’ - named after the old head-gardener responsible for planting many thousands of the daffodils.
The first tulips are appearing in the borders. Some reliable varieties that grow well with us are Tulipa Kaufmanniana “Ice Stick”, one of the first to appear in the borders, and T. ‘Spring Green’ is a good doer, elegant and healthy. In the longer grass on the edge of daffodils we love the tall, upright T. ‘Cheers’ which last for weeks. The stunning yellow wild tulip T. sylvestris gets slightly lost in the daffodils but naturalises well in dappled shade. In the Autumn we also generously plant up a mass of pots of tulips to give blasts of colour with which we array the tables of the terrace and the Potting Shed Café to spread the wonder and keep spring blooming in our little corner of Cambridgeshire.
Along the edge of paths from the lake towards the house you will also discover long, snaking meanderings alive with an array of spring flowers, but most of all wild grape hyacinths. These look like mini versions of the more common hyacinths we see at Christmas but are not in fact related. But they are sweetly scented, their Latin name Muscari armeniacum deriving from the word ‘musk’ to describe the heady, vanilla fragrance to crown your springtime walk. Many other bulbs such as bluebell-like Squills (Scilla Siberia), spotty, purple and white snakehead fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) that enjoy like the damp grass verge along the lake are blooming at this special time of year.
The longer spring garden walks through the ‘Wilderness’ take you through trees and shrubs, along the lake, canal and ponds. There are many interesting and quite rare trees here: an extended avenue of copper beech either side of the long canal is particularly remarkable when the first downy, transparent-pink leaves start to appear. And adjacent to this an area of a few hundred, silver-white, Himalayan birch with their delicate tracery of branches and tiny unfurling leaves, caught in moment between sleeping and fully awake; a magical, ephemeral time to be exploring the garden delights of Chippenham Park in the spring.
Enjoy some of the best gardens in spring at Chippenham Park Gardens, located outside Newmarket, Cambridgeshire. We are open every day from now until 16th April 2025, from 10am until 4pm (last entry at 3pm). Visitors can enjoy leisurely strolls through our gardens, exploring the woodland walks, lakes, and canals.
Stop by our cosy Potting Shed Café, open daily until the park closes at 4pm, where you’ll find local produce to enjoy after your spring walk.
Plan your visit and discover one of the most charming spring gardens in Cambridgeshire.
See our Entry Prices and other Important Information here.
Please note: we are a cash only facility.
