There are currently 14 banana trees in David Buchanan-Cook’s bathroom, sprouting up to seven feet tall in their pots and with broad glossy leaves springing from their skinny trunks.

“It’s a big bathroom,” he concedes, “but it is becoming more of a struggle to get them upstairs as each year goes by.”

It makes having a bath a rather exotic experience. But leaving the plants in the garden of his 18th century home in Kincardine in the teeth of winter’s icy blast, would not end well.

Banana trees in Fife, of course, begs one question. “No, we don’t get fruit, but we make a joke of it when we are asked,” he continues. “Haven’t you ever heard of Fyffe bananas?”.

While the banana trees enjoy indoor comforts as they wait for spring and their return to the garden, outside preparations are underway for June, when the gates to Helensbank are thrown open to curious visitors keen to peek inside.

The Kincardine property is one of more than 500 gardens taking part in this year’s Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, when mostly private gardens tended by green fingered enthusiasts with a passion for planting are unlocked for visitors to browse in return for a donation to charity.

At Helensbank they will find a new Japanese garden with pagoda, brilliantly coloured azaleas, leafy acers and towering bamboo, alongside a national collection of Portland roses in full blossom. The banana trees will be back in their position alongside other exotics on the ‘hot’ terrace, overshadowed by the sprawling 270-year-old Cedar of Lebanon tree, the second largest of its kind in Fife.

While David and partner Adrian Miles, a horticulturist who has a specialist knowledge of rose cultivation, wait patiently for their garden to wake, other gardens taking part in the annual charity event have already opened to show off snowdrop collections and winter plants – an early taste for visitors of spring to come.

At Millfield in the historic Fife village of Falkland, visitors have found over 100 different snowdrop varieties set in beds at waist-height to make it easier to see them up close, along with evergreens in a walled garden and a grove of ferns, hebes, winter aconites and Primula Candelabras.

It is the first year Sarah Marshall, who began work on the garden 12 years ago, has opened her garden to the public. However, plans are underway to include Millfield in a new snowdrop trail being plotted by Falkland Garden Group and which will turn the village into a pilgrimage for galanthophiles in winters to come.

For snowdrop hunters, gardens from the Tweed Valley to Couper Angus are open this weekend: at Kailzie Gardens, just a mile east of Peebles, snowdrops carpet the grounds and cling to the edges of a bubbling stream; further north at Princeland House in Blairgowrie, different varieties have been planted in drifts among mature trees and in Lanark, the 18th century garden at Stable House, Cleghorn Farm, boasts an abundance of snowy blooms.

The 2022 programme of gardens opening for viewing under the national scheme includes peaceful country gardens, such as the Old Manse Garden in Wanlockhead, the highest village in Scotland and dedicated to providing habitats for wildlife.

There are also 19 gardens located on nine Scottish islands, from Shetland to Gigha.

Among them are Dunvegan Castle on Skye, where in contrast to the barren moorland and mountains of the island’s landscape, the woodland walks, Water Garden with ornate bridges and plant packed islands, and the Walled Garden with lily pond, provide an oasis for an eclectic mix of flowers, exotic plants, shrubs and specimen trees framed by shimmering pools fed from waterfalls.

At Achamore Gardens on Gigha, botanical enthusiast Colonel Sir James Horlick cultivated a once blooming garden packed with rhododendrons, camellias, azaleas and sub-tropical shrubs and trees imported from Australia and New Zealand.

Having been neglected for years, it is now community owned and being teased back to full glory by an all-female team of four gardeners: the first time in its history that it has been in the hands of a woman head gardener.

This year some gardens under the garden scheme have been grouped into trails, offering enthusiasts a chance to explore several private and rarely seen gardens in a single outing.

The Gardens of the Lower New Town trail in Edinburgh which opens in June, includes the striking Potted Garden. Awarded a Gold Medal at RHS My Chelsea Garden last year, it houses a quirky succulent garden with plants growing over an armchair and other objects placed at the house entrance.

Last year Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, which raises funds for around 250 other charities each year, saw around 55,000 visitors take in gardens on specific dates or by arrangement – a figure expected to increase this year as Covid restrictions ease. Most are privately owned and normally inaccessible to the public at other times.

Liz Stewart, National Organiser for the charity said: “We’re excited to welcome everyone back for another season of gardens open for charity and to share the wonderful variety of gardens we have to offer in Scotland: our West Coast Gulf Stream gardens with their exotic plantings of tree ferns and giant gunnera; stunning rose gardens and the heavenly blue meconopsis; our village openings where productive plots bursting with vegetables sit alongside delightful cottage gardens.

“Most of all, we know that our garden openings provide such pleasure to both visitors and garden owners; the chance to connect with other garden lovers, to inspire and be inspired, all while raising much needed funds for charity.”

At Helensbank in Kincardine, the banana trees will soon make the short journey back to the garden allowing the bathroom to return to normal.

David and Adrian have overcome the challenges of shade and needle fall presented by the impressive tree and created a series of garden ‘rooms’ including a perennial blue and white cottage garden, a ‘hot’ courtyard with exotic plants such as iochroma, with trumpet-like blooms of deep purple and red, and, stars of the show, their national collection of Portland roses.

David bought his first using a garden token given by colleagues on his early retirement from work as a forensic accountant. Now the garden boasts rare and imported varieties which fill the air with perfume and challenge his investigative skills in tracking down difficult to source roses.

The half-acre garden with its romantic water features, garden ornaments and even resident tortoise called Viktor and Pebble, the blind hedgehog, may look perfect but, insists David, there is always something to do.

“It’s still a work in progress,” he says. “We are always wanting to change things.”

Details of gardens opening under Scotland’s Gardens Scheme can be found at www.scotlandsgardens.org. Helensbank in Kincardine, Fife, will open from June to the end of September by arrangement.