Daffodil delights to explore this spring

Daffodils offer a wonderful sunny face to the world and help lift our spirits as spring arrives. Many National Garden Scheme gardens have hosts of daffodils, some in drifts, some scattered among orchards or in borders, beds and pots. Here’s a taster of what’s in store in 2026. 

Albury Park, Surrey
The 14 acre pleasure grounds were laid out in the 1670s by John Evelyn for Henry Howard, who would later become the 6th Duke of Norfolk. The grounds inc a ¼ mile of terraces, a fine collection of trees, a lake, and a river.
Opens 22 March for daffodils
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Lower Bowden Manor, Berkshire
A 7 acre designer’s garden with stunning views, and where structure predominates. Specimen trees show contrasting bark and foliage. A marble ‘Pan’ plays to a pond with boulders and boulder shaped evergreens. Versailles planters with standard topiaries line a rill. A stumpery leads to the orchard’s carpet of daffodils in April, followed later by a wave of white hydrangeas.
This garden opens for By Arrangement visits from 12 January to 27 November for groups of between 12 and 40.
Details here: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

The Old Rectory, Wantage, OX12 8NX
8 acre garden with a series of immaculately tended garden ‘rooms’. Herbaceous borders, arboretum, secret garden, roses, vegetables, pool, bog gardens and woodland, with an explosion of rare and interesting plants, beautifully combined for colour and texture. Stunning views, and once home to John Betjeman (memorial window by John Piper in church). Specialist plants and home-made preserves for sale.
Opens Sunday 12 April, 10 May, 24 June and 29 July
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Stubbings House, Maidenhead Berkshire
Parkland garden accessed via the adjacent retail plant centre. Set around an C18 Grade II listed house (not open), which was home to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands during WW2. A large lawn with a ha-ha, woodland walks, and notable trees inc historic cedars and araucaria. March brings an abundance of daffodils and in May a 60 metre wall of wisteria.
Opens 14 and 15 March and 9 and 10 May.
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Rydal Mount and Gardens, Cumbria
Rydal Mount is the historic home of the Wordsworth family. The poet, William Wordsworth, was a talented landscape gardener as well as a poet, and the Rydal Mount garden is the largest example of his design. The garden stretches over 5 acres, including terraces that Wordsworth built, informal herbaceous borders, trees planted by the poet, and a wonderful range of traditional lakeland plants.
Opens Monday 30 and Tuesday 31 March, 1 April, 1,2 & 3 June.
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Chevin Brae, Belper, Derbyshire
A large garden, with swathes of daffodils in the orchard during spring. Extensive wildflower planting along edge of wood features aconites, snowdrops, wood anemones, fritillaries and dog’s tooth violets. Other parts of garden will have hellebores and early camellias. In the summer, the large flower borders and rose trellises give much colour, and the vegetable and fruit gardens are at their peak.
Opens Saturday 21 March
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Waterend House, St Albans, Hertfordshire
A hidden garden of four acres sets off an elegant Jacobean Manor House (not open). Steep grass slopes and fine views of glorious countryside. Large quantities of spring bulbs, formal flint-walled garden. Roses, peonies and irises in summer. Formal beds and lots of colour throughout the year. Mature specimen trees, ponds, formal vegetable garden and chickens. Personalised tour of garden inc.
This garden opens for By Arrangement visits from 16 February to 27 July for groups of between 20 and 25.
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

 Mount Ephraim Gardens, Faversham, Kent
A privately-owned family home set in 10 acres of terraced Edwardian gardens with stunning views over the Kent countryside. Highlights inc a Japanese rock and water garden, arboretum, unusual topiary and a spectacular grass maze plus many mature trees, shrubs and spring bulbs.
Opens Sunday 29 March
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Ashbrook House, Oxfordshire
The garden where Kenneth Grahame read Wind in the Willows to local children and where he took inspiration for his description of the oak doors to Badger’s House. Come and see, you may catch a glimpse of Toad and friends in this 3½ acre chalk and water garden, in a beautiful spring line village. In spring the banks are a mass of daffodils and other bulbs.
Opens Sunday 29 March
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Penns in the Rock, Tunbridge Wells, Kent
A large garden with a spectacular outcrop of rocks, 140 million yrs old. The grounds inc a lake, C18 and C20 temples, and woods. Daffodils, bluebells, azaleas, and magnolias. An old walled garden with herbaceous borders, roses, and shrubs. A 1928 pool and pond gardens. Part C18 house (not open) once owned by William Penn of Pennsylvania.
Opens Sunday 29 March
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

 Goldsborough Hall, Yorkshire
Historic 12 acre garden and formal landscaped grounds in parkland setting around Grade II, C17 house, former residence of HRH Princess Mary, daughter of George V and Queen Mary. Gertrude Jekyll inspired 120ft double herbaceous borders, rose garden and woodland walk. Large restored kitchen garden with rill, fountain and large glasshouse which produces fruit and vegetables for the Hall’s commercial kitchens.
Opens Sunday 29 March
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme

Hatfield House West Garden, Hertfordshire
Visitors can enjoy the spring bulbs in the lime walk, sundial garden and view the famous Old Palace garden, childhood home of Queen Elizabeth I. The adjoining woodland garden is at its best in spring with masses of naturalised daffodils and bluebells.
Opens 21 March
Details: Find a Garden | National Garden Scheme