Flower festival

Some of Perthshire’s finest gardens will feature in this year’s Scottish Snowdrop Festival.

And visitors are being invited to enjoy the sheets of white flowers and collections of special varieties of mid-winter’s loveliest bloom.

The festival runs throughout the peak of snowdrop season, having started on Tuesday this week and running until Friday, March 11.

In Strathearn, snowdrop hotspots Cloan, near Auchterarder, and Braco Castle will be taking part.

Cloan will be open on Sunday, February 20, to show off the snowdrops that carpet its two-acre wild garden, while Braco Castle opens for the season on Tuesday, February 1.

Its snowdrops feature in a 19th century-designed landscape that has been expanded over the last three decades.

The Scottish Snowdrop Festival is organised by Discover Scottish Gardens, in collaboration with Scotland’s Gardens Schemes, whose members open their gardens for charity.

Dougal Philip, director of Discover Scottish Gardens, said:“From very humble beginnings this festival has grown to become a much-cherished celebration of the beauty of our gardens at that moment when winter starts to give way to spring.”

And Liz Stewart, director of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, added: “Our members range from large estates to small private gardens so the festival offers the chance to be wowed by snowdrops growing in large numbers or enchanted by blooms in intimate settings.”

• See www. discoverscottishgardens.org or www.visitscotland.com.