Carol Klein on the delight and optimism that snowdrops bring, plus she answers your questions on persicaria and winter jobs
Optimism starts to pervade your gardening as snowdrops appear
Shoots of snowdrops are already evident all around the garden. As we’ve been clearing away the detritus from the year’s growth, all sorts of forgotten treasures are beginning to appear. There are literally thousands of snowdrop spears bursting through the dark, damp earth and by the time you’re reading this, the first white bells will have opened.
Some gardeners are enchanted by autumn-flowering snowdrops (Galanthus reginae-olgae is the most frequently grown, flowering from October) and though autumn is their natural time to flower, I prefer to reserve my snowdrop worship until the new year, with the promise of spring they always bring. First to flower here is ‘Atkinsii’, a relatively tall and very elegant snowdrop with long, refined outer petals. Although it sets no seed, it increases rapidly, its bulbs multiplying each year.
We tend to grow one variety of snowdrop in one bed – through the shady part of the garden there are 10 or so small ‘island’ beds with paths around them and most have their own snowdrop variety.
Every couple of years during the early summer, before other foliage obscures their waning leaves, we dig them up and divide them. We separate clumps into single bulbs, enriching the soil with compost, and replant them singly, though in close proximity, in as random a way as possible in an attempt to achieve a naturalistic look. Bulbs go back in about 10-15cm (4-6in) deep – it’s almost impossible to plant them too deep – as long as they’re the right way up.
In the first bed on the corner as you’re walking up the track, we’ve used ‘Magnet’. When we filmed Life in a Cottage Garden, we concentrated on this bed in a sequence designed to show how tough snowdrops are and how well they stand up to the weather. They’ve evolved to flower at this time of year so that’s what you’d expect. The choice of ’Magnet’ was apt. It has an exceptionally long pedicel – the hair-fine stem which bears the flower – and the flowers were whirled round and round undamaged as if they were on a carousel.
I'm no galanthophile but I love snowdrops. They’re so lifeaffirming, no matter how grey the day; as soon as you see those first pristine flowers bursting through the winter mire, a feeling of optimism begins to pervade your gardening efforts. Perhaps my favourite snowdrop is ‘S. Arnott’. It’s most good-natured, always obliging with a show of flowers whose shape is perfection and whose honey scent drifts around the garden on days we’re treated to a ration of winter sun.
Mingling with the snowdrops’ scent, the perfume of winterflowering shrubs fills the air. Mahonia japonica, with its bold, evergreen foliage and pendulous racemes of pretty, pale yellow flowers, scented like lily of the valley. And Hamamelis mollis with its extraordinary spicy scent.
Another plant that’s showing its buds as I write is the hellebore. By the time galanthus ‘S. Arnott’ shakes its pristine heads free from their enveloping leaves, many of our Lenten roses – forms of Helleborus hybridus – will be opening their buds in a whole medley of spellbinding colours.
The handsome, shiny foliage of Arum italicum pictum, each leaf outlined and veined in white, makes a bold contrast to snowdrops. Often spread by blackbirds, arums can pop up anywhere. Our best clump was in the middle of a veg patch; and we had to dig deep to remove all its tubers but then there were all sorts of places to transplant them to.
At this time of year every leaf is noticed and every flower enjoyed and cherished, getting us through the bleakest days and helping us anticipate the year to come.
'Mingling with the snowdrops’ scent, the perfume of winter-flowering shrubs fills the air'