With spring bulbs and trees bursting into blossom, Wisley is an enchanting place to explore in March. Walk through carpets of spring flowers and enjoy branches bedecked with camellia and magnolia blooms. The Fruit Field starts to fill with blossom, and the Model Vegetable Garden is being prepared for crop sowing - learn more about this on 23-24 March with our special Grow Your Own events.
We always have a wonderful show of beautiful alpines in the Alpine Display House. In March the highlights include hepaticas and Pleione, semi-epiphytic orchids with large, exotic-looking yet delicate flowers that come in a range of colours.
In March the Alpine Meadow sparkles with flowers, all the better this year as the winter has been so long and cold. It is carpeted first with crocus, then hoop petticoat daffodils, and dog’s tooth violets. It depends on the weather but down near the ponds you might see chequered petals on snake’s-head fritillaries and new plantings of drumstick primulas.
The Conifer Lawn has been a bulb field for five years now, with ribbons of daffodils rolling across the gentle slopes. Here we have ‘Occasionally’, ‘Border Beauty’ and ‘Kokopelli’ AGM . Pansies fill the seasonal bedding on Top Terrace. Along the outside of the south-facing wall of the Walled Garden you can see small pink flowers on bare stems on Abeliophyllum distichum Roseum Group.
Avenues of daffodils stretch into the distance in the Jubilee Arboretum. Beyond the vineyard you can see fields of yellow daffs such as Narcissus ‘Ice Follies’ AGM, N. ‘Saint Patrick’s Day’, N. ‘Professor Einstein’ and N. ‘Sir Winston Churchill’ AGM, as well as some white flowered cultivars.
In early March the spring snowflake, Leucojum vernum AGM fades and the summer snowflake L. aestivum starts to take over. Snowflakes are related to snowdrops, but have six equal tepals, whereas snowdrops have three small inner and three larger outer tepals.
Rivers of blue and white sweep from the bridge of the Round Pond and around the lake, with Muscari armeniacum AGM (grape hyacinth) and Narcissus ‘Toto’ AGM.
Look up instead of down for pink and white blossoms on the many ornamental Prunus (cherry), Malus (apple) and Pyrus (pear) trees. From as early as February they produce a succession of single and double blossoms in shades of pink and white. The pretty little flowering cherry tree Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’ is our Plant of the Month.
Reward yourself with a trip to the fruit field. The blossom grows in intensity from March when the plums are the first to put on a fantastic display. Later come the pears and apricots.
Weather Hill is home to the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden, now in its second spring. Old favourites remain, though. Around the Cornus collection Narcissus ‘Kokopelli’ AGM, ‘Toto’ AGM and ‘Oz’ are flowering cheerfully. Up between the yew hedges behind the Bowes-Lyon Pavilion at the top of the hill you can find the yellow, purple and white of mixed crocuses in early March.