GARDEN lovers should head to Gilbert White’s House this weekend for a host of treats.

On Saturday, February 20, head gardener David Standing is giving a talk entitled The Story of the Hampshire Cottage Garden, on Saturday at noon.

This will be two hours long and will offer insights into the history and heritage of our county’s gardens, from how they are styled to the traditional plants grown in them.

Tickets are £5 and can be bought online from www.gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk or from the museum shop.

Gilbert White, the pioneering 18th century naturalist, was as passionate about gardening as he was about the flora and fauna to be found in the Selborne landscape. And his is very much a gardener’s garden, a heady mix of beauty and practicality.

Over the weekend, February 20 and 21, from 10.30am to 4.30pm, the snowdrop is being celebrated with reduced garden admission. For £6 you have the chance to stroll through the garden in its winter mantle amid carpets of snowdrops, and with spring bulbs of daffodils and crocuses springing up. Information will be given on the snowdrop too. And the Eighteenth Century Tea Parlour will be open for warming refreshments.

An exhibition at the house from March 1 to 14, will mark the 250th anniversary of the first recording of a Hampshire butterfly, the brimstone (pictured).

In his journal Flora Selborniensis White wrote: “Saw ye first butterfly, P. sulphureus, a brimstone-coloured one; some people saw several of these, & several that were coloured with black spots; these are I believe, P. urticae.”

The exhibition will include a copy of the entry with information about the brimstone, including recent information on numbers.