At the end of January, I was invited to give a talk to a garden club in Cambridge, and as the weather looked to be set fair (ie not raining or freezing as much of the previous month had been) I took the opportunity to spend a few hours in one of my favourite gardens, Cambridge Botanic Garden.

And remarkably just as I arrived the sun came out for what felt like the first time in weeks, and stayed out, bathing the garden in its weakly warming embrace for the next three hours: sunshine to light up a garden coming to life after its winter slumber. Snowdrops were everywhere in a myriad of forms:

Scented shrubs like Daphne, Chimonanthus and especially Sarcococca created pools of perfumed air, enough to stop me in my tracks to luxuriate in the extravagant scent:

Other flowers were also welcome to the party, with both wind- and insect-pollinated ones featuring over most of the garden, although given the cool air temperatures, no more than 4ºC even in the sun, there were few insects to take advantage of those trying to draw them in. In fact, the only ones were queen Buff-tailed Bumblebees, wrapped in fur coats and seemingly irresistibly drawn to Salix aegyptiaca, as they will be to native sallows when they burst.

But who needs flowers when there are those other winter treats: bark and branches…

… foliage, fruits and fungi!

And when the cloud swept in just after lunch, temperatures plummeting in a dramatic return to the icy grasp of winter, there was the delightful prospect of the glasshouses to round off a lovely day. A trip round the world in an hour!