HOW TO NATURALISE SNOWDROPS
Make a carpet of snowdrops a reality in your garden
WHO wouldn’t want to pull back the curtains on a dreary February day and look out onto drifts of snowdrops? These fascinating plants are among the highlights of late winter.
As with most things we crave, though, creating such a display is not easy. It’s for this reason that so many of us head out in late winter to admire the carpets of tiny bell flowers in open gardens.
The first snowdrop display that I admired as a young gardener was at Kingston Lacy in Dorset. The sheets of snowdrops weave their way through the 40-acre garden. The plants have been naturalising slowly since the first snowdrops were planted on the estate more than a century ago. Snowdrops were collected by the wealthy in the past and they were distributed among their fellow galanthophiles. This explains why large estates are often home to such impressive scenes.
In recent months, an enchanting book called The Galanthophiles by Jane Kilpatrick and Jennifer Harmer has been published (£45, Orphans Publishing). It celebrates 160 years of snowdrop devotees, and after reading it you will have a new understanding of how much patience and dedication it takes to grow these plants.
If you still fancy the challenge of creating a snowdrop drift and are prepared to wait for the results, now is the time to make the first move. Within the Galanthus genus are many different snowdrops offering varied heights, shapes, sizes and petal markings. For a natural drift I would stick to the common types that offer more vigour. If you have a successful clump in the garden, try to identify this and stick with it. There is no shame in having success with the simple Galanthus nivalis because some snowdrops have a handsome price tag and for drifts you need a reliable and affordable snowdrop.
The right spot
Snowdrops enjoy dappled shade and a soil that is moist but well drained, which is always tricky to achieve. To find out more, I spoke to my local snowdrop expert, Roger Norman from Ivy Croft Plants in Herefordshire
( ivycroftgarden.co.uk). The two-acre garden he has created over the past 20 years with his wife Sue is home to a snowdrop nursery. “The soil is perfect here for snowdrops – a rich alluvial silt that doesn’t dry out too quickly,” he explains.
“Deciduous shade with thin grass or a woodland floor is ideal for drifts, as thick pasture grass is far too much for the snowdrops to compete with,” adds Roger. “Avoid cutting the grass until the snowdrop leaves have died back.”
In their garden, they have experimented over the years with multiplying snowdrop bulbs. Their snowdrops are planted in a fertile soil in a vegetable garden that does not receive too much sun. “On average, we find one bulb will make two in the first year, then four, then eight, then 16 in year four,” explains Roger. “It takes time or a lot of money to establish a sheet, but it’s worth it.”
To develop a sheet from Galanthus
nivalis, Roger suggests lifting and dividing plants just as the foliage is about to turn completely yellow in April. “This is much later than the traditional ‘in the green’ planting, but it works well for us, and I suggest you do this every three years.”
When it comes to starting from scratch, Roger recommends planting dormant bulbs in July or August at a depth of 6in (15cm), or potted plants. “Buy dormant or dormant potted. Or at worst, very late in the green, going brown!” says Roger.
The Normans open their garden for the NGS on 7, 14, 21 and 28 February, from 9am-4.30pm.