Where beauteous gems appear
FEW flowers are more uplifting on arrival than the snowdrop, the ‘beauteous gems’ brightening the ‘bare and chilling gloom’ of winter, as Mary Darby Robinson put it in her sonnet The Snowdrop. Hever Castle in Kent has a magnificent walk that takes in 100,000 of them, including unusual cultivars such as ‘Green Brush’, ‘Colossus’ and ‘Wendy’s Gold’ (www. hevercastle.co.uk). To start the season, garden writer and COUNTRY LIFE contributor Val Bourne will give a talk on February 12, revealing her favourite varieties and their stories.
‘There’s only one thing that keeps me going in the dark days of winter—and that’s the arrival of my snowdrops,’ she says. ‘I’m besotted with them, but they’re all different and some are easier than others. I’m going to focus on the best 20 to grow and where they grow best and I’ll pepper my talk with anecdotes about galanthophiles past and present.’
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, promises an enchanting display with its 120,000 Galanthus bulbs (walks start from today, February 2, www.waddesdon.org.uk). In Lincolnshire, the exquisitely restored Easton Walled Garden is covered in snowdrops until early March, with a delightful woodland walk (www.visiteaston.co.uk). In London, the Chelsea Physic Garden has a Heralding Spring trail (www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk).
The National Garden Scheme offers plenty of opportunities with its Festival of Snowdrops, which runs throughout February and counts more than 100 participating gardens. Highlights include Copton Ash, Spring Platt and Knowle Hill Farm in Kent; Higher Cherubeer, Devon; Pembury House, East Sussex; and Hollyhocks in Oxfordshire. All are owned by snowdrop specialists (download the NGS app or visit www.ngs.org.uk/snowdrops).
On February 19 and 20, the Shepton Snowdrop Festival in Somerset honours the work of Victorian horticulturalist James Allen, the ‘Snowdrop King’, with a memorial lecture, a heritage and snowdrop trail, art and horticulture workshops, poetry and photography competitions and a plant sale that includes rare varieties (www.sheptonsnowdrops. org.uk). Further west in the county, the famous Snowdrop Valley at Wheddon Cross on Exmoor is open until February 27, with parking and refreshments in the market car park (www.wheddoncross. org.uk/snowdropvalley.htm).
No white-magic tour is complete without a trip to Colesbourne Gardens, Gloucestershire, once home to botanist and galanthophile Henry John Elwes. Open every weekend in February, the garden has 10 acres of formal snowdrop walks with more than 350 cultivars, including the fragrant Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’, first sent to Elwes by Scottish gardener Samuel Arnott, and the yellow-tinged G. elwesii ‘Carolyn Elwes’, so sought after that thieves uprooted and stole a clump in 1997. Colesbourne sells potted bulbs in flower, too, not least G. elwesii ‘elwesii’, a descendant of the giant snowdrop originally collected by Elwes (www.colesbournegardens.org.uk).
Snowdrop buyers should also head to Kent for the Plant Fairs Roadshow at Hole Park (February 13, www.plant-fairs.co.uk) and the Snowdrop Sensation Plant Fair at Great Comp Garden (February 20, www. greatcompgarden.co.uk). To learn more, George G. Brownlee’s new book, A Passion for Snowdrops, is an engaging guide (£15.99, Whittles Publishing).
There’s only one thing that keeps me going in winter; I’m besotted with them