Garden Bears' World - Snowdrops at Rode Hall

 Hello everyone!  I think what we need to cheer us all up during this stormy weather is a Garden Bears World visit to a very special garden near where we live.

Just before poor Grizzly got the nasty virus, we had a super day out.  As Huddlesford and Hanley had been enjoying adventures, Polar and Grizzly suggested that Sonning and I, and the two cubs, might like an afternoon out at Rode Hall Gardens in Cheshire, famous for its carpet of snowdrops.

The house is an elegant old mansion and still belongs to the Wilbraham family, who have lived on the site since the 1620s, although the current Hall is a little bit younger than that!

As well as snowdrops, there are other lovely winter flowers here.  The first one I noticed was a lovely scenty shrub called Daphne. We have a small one in the garden at home but there are several large ones on the path that leads down to the hall from the car park and the scent is amazing, especially if you have a bear nose!

There are clumps of snowdrops under the Daphnes and the little cubs insisted on being allowed out of the Bear Bag for a closer look.  They could see there were different varieties, as some were taller, others had broader petals and some had more green markings on the petals.  Even in our garden, we have two (identified as "taller" and "shorter") but there were more than that here and there are supposed to be around two and a half thousand different cultivars in the UK!

Rode Hall also has spring-flowering cyclamen in its gardens - these pretty little Cyclamen coum.  Like the autumn-flowering Cyclamen hederifolium they like growing under trees and they look very similar, although their leaves are slightly rounder.

We started exploring the woodland walk next, and found there were plenty of climbing logs with moss on where we could practice our wild bear skills.

It was while we were sitting on one of the logs, near the end of the woodland walk, that we spotted the biggest drift of snowdrops we had ever seen.  There must have been hundreds of thousands of them!

We skipped down the path and went to explore, running around among them but being very careful not to trample any under our paws.  It was amazing to think that such dainty little flowers are in bloom when the weather is usually cold and even icy.  They really did look like a carpet of snow.

When we had spent enough time exploring and sniffing the snowdrops (which do have a nice smell, although it is not always strong enough for humans to notice), Sonning climbed up onto a bench to wave to Polar and Grizzly, so we could get a lift in the Bear Bag down to the next part of the garden.

Beyond this lovely waterfall is a path that leads down to the lake, where there is an old boathouse.  We wondered if we would spot any interesting birds but just saw some Canada geese on this visit, although Grizzly thought he could see a grebe in the distance.

Polar let us do a little more climbing on the trees here, while it was quiet, then we made our way back to the main gardens, finding a different path that led into a rocky glen.

I had a fine time of it here, practicing my free-climbing ready for future Mountaineering Bears adventures, and spotting a fabulous "corkscrew hazel" shrub (Corylus avellana 'Contorta').

This path took us to a little sad garden, for family pets who had passed over the Rainbow Bridge, so we all put our paws together for them before moving on to the formal gardens in front of the house.

The rose gardens were very bare but on the steps leading to the house we saw some lovely miniature irises.  Polar has grown some in pots this year and I am going to try and find good places we can plant them out in the garden to flower in future years, where they won't get too wet.

There were some very nice Hellebore plants too - although I think ours are even nicer!

The way out was through the Kitchen Garden, which I thought was marvelous, even though there are not many vegetables growing in it at this time of year.  The gardener has a nice cottage to live in and had a good chat with Polar and Grizzly about carrot root fly and allium leaf miner and other pests, which he also has problems with.

There are big greenhouses and also a nice, big potting shed, and a rhubarb patch with proper pottery rhubarb forcers.  I climbed on one of them but couldn't get the lid off to look inside, which was probably just as well as they are for keeping the light out to grow very tender, early rhubarb.

The last place we visited was the Italian Garden, which is planted inside the shell of an old part of the Hall that used to be used for big get-togethers for all the estate staff, when there were dozens and dozens of them before the First World War.  Now it makes a lovely shady courtyard in the summer and a sheltered spot on a windy wintry day.

I hope Polar and Grizzly will bring us back again, when there are more daffodils and crocus in flower, or to see the roses and the cut-flower beds in the kitchen garden in the summer.

And I hope to be back with more Garden Bears World adventures soon.