Though the weather will often be at its worst in the early days of a new year, it’s a joy to spot the snowdrops that begin to appear at this time in gardens across the country. Like tiny pinpoints of light, they are often thought of as the harbingers of spring.

          Spotted in the gloom, they may be cause for a little optimistic smile, but for a proper pick-me-up, for confirmation that spring really is on its way it’s worth travelling a few miles west of Glasgow to Finlaystone Country Estate. There the snowdrops, mostly the common Galanthus nivalis, grow in glorious abundance.

Most visitors drive to the estate but others take the train from Glasgow’s Central Station to the village of Langbank. It’s a twenty minutes journey that leaves the city behind and allows passengers to see out over the widening River Clyde as far as the distant peak of Ben Lomond, about twenty miles away and northwest to another mountain range known locally as the Arrochar Alps. These peaks can be snow covered at any time of the year.

The walk through the village of Langbank is pleasant, then a further few minutes of pavement walking alongside the M8 leads to the estate’s entrance gate and approach road.

Pick up a map from the visitor centre and the Snowdrop Stroll can be followed easily on a way marked path.

My first visit of the year coincided with one of those occasional, bright days that come like a glad tiding and seem to announce the approach of spring.

I followed the Burnside Path leading alongside the course of a small river. A bench has been placed in an ideal spot for visitors to sit and enjoy the sight and sounds of a waterfall dropping from a height over a wall of rock. Sunlight filtered by the trees makes the water sparkle. Poking above the ground cover of dark leaf mould, the clusters of snowdrops beneath the still bare trees appear to be glowing.  

But as the poet Henry Van Dyke said, ‘the first day of spring according to the calendar is one thing and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month’. This is usually true, but no matter. Even if the weather reverts to wintry we should keep in mind that spring is sure to follow.

Get out for even a short walk and your spirits will be lifted on seeing someone’s flower filled window boxes, or an array of flower pots set on an outside stair. In the West End of Glasgow, containers of vivid red and orange pansies with black centres are popular. Other plant pots are filled with mixtures of pale yellow, bright blue or shocking pink primulas.

As the days lengthen, Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens offer a succession of cheering carpets of gold and purple crocuses, followed by yellow daffodils that come each year in spite of the earlier wintry weather.

While the daffodils and cream coloured narcissi nod in the wind, red rhododendrons and white and red magnolia blossom add their own particular beauty to the displays. Sadly, a sharp shower of hailstones can cause their petals to fall all too soon. Yet after each April blast of wind and cold rain the tulips in the formal beds still stand tall, reaching for the sun.

By this time at Finlaystone Estate, the cherry trees, smothered in pink blossom, look their loveliest against the occasional deep blue of a spring time sky.

There’s still not much in bloom in the walled garden but it’s a pleasure to sit for a few minutes and watch the play of water falling into the pool of the fountain, newly switched on for the season.

In the aptly named Smelly Garden – now there’s an invitation to get close to the plantings - the rockery contains a few aubretia, the low masses of flowers adding daubs of mauve amongst the varied greens of other plants and greys of the rocks.

Further into the main garden, other interesting features include the low-lying bog area and the Celtic knot outlined with brickwork on the ground.

The bright yellow of Forsythia blossom and the brilliant red bract tips above the white flowers of Pieris Japonica look particularly stunning but arguably can’t compete with the walls of striking red rhododendrons which even this early in the season prove attractive to big fat bumble bees and elusive small birds.

From a path in another area of the garden, visitors can look over a grassy area planted with daffodils and through a gap in a wall of the same red rhododendrons. This view appears to continue seamlessly out over the River Clyde to the far shore and hills beyond - a landscape gardener’s technique that makes use of ‘borrowed landscape’.

Further along this path there’s a sunken garden bordered by a hedge trimmed to look like the battlements of a castle. Nearer the main house in a private part of the garden visitors can see the yew tree under which John Knox is said to have celebrated the first reformed communion in the west of Scotland in 1556.

I wonder if Mister Knox would have agreed with the American gardening author Ruth Stout who said, ‘I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.’

                                                  First published in The People’s Friend