I get invited to Snowdrop Lunches even though I’m not a galanthophile. These bring like-minded people together socially, to walk around in nice settings at a time of the year when everyone is tightly coiled waiting to resume garden activities. Opportunities to get involved are rare because the lunches are a bit elitist and not at all egalitarian. . To be honest I am grateful to be invited, but up till now I’ve kept very quiet about not really being entitled. You might need to throw your own lunches.
Galanthophiles are a bit obsessed with the minutiae in snowdrop flowers – small differences in green markings on the inner tepals which are seen by many as irrelevant or at the worst, silly. Different kinds of snowdrop should be of great interest to the general gardener. Snowdrops gladden our hearts and breathe new life on quiescent gardening urges. But, the differences from snowdrop to snowdrop need to be obvious, able to be seen without the aid of dental mirrors on sticks and without the inevitable muddy knees. For instance, gardeners might be interested to grow Galanthus elwesii var.monostictus ‘Hiemalis’ which brings the season forward to October, November and December, or late flowering forms like ‘April Fool’ (but by that time lots of other flowers are competing for our attention). Also, good foliage is important. Galanthus elwesii has sheafs of broad grey leaves which are delightful so early in the season and ‘Armine’ has good foliage and flowers giving it gravitas.
Doubles are significant too. Snowdrop flowers close in cold or wet and windy weather but doubles don’t. That means they are more effective in gardens for more of the time. As you might imagine the galanthophiles recognise many kinds of doubles particularly the Greatorex Doubles – ‘Hippolyta’, ‘Desdemona’, ‘Cordelia’, and the rest. These are all very similar, indeed, are difficult to distinguish. To me the common-or-garden Galanthus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’ is good enough. It clumps up quickly and is up there among my top three favourites.
Pick your snowdrops. Picking any flower and putting it on a table is an opportunity to get to know it better. OK, with snowdrops this is where mania might take off because one can observe the inner marking more carefully, but, one snowdrop characteristic remains to be really appreciated – which is their scent and having them closer to your nose helps. The scent varies from cultivar to cultivar. ‘S.Arnott’ smells heavenly. Breathing deeply is something else that increases our sense of bell-being.
For wildest effect plant them across your garden amongst everything else – they’ll be dormant by the time other plants wake up so won’t compete. The cheapest way to do this is to divide them. They’re best divided when dormant in summer and put straight back in the ground (drying-out causes problems) but they are easiest to divide straight after flowering and barely suffer. Make sure you dig deep enough to get most of the roots and, again, put them straight back. I like them in random patterns as if they had spread naturally so I allow maybe 10cm or so between them as a minimum and have isolated ones metres away. They bulk-up quickly so you can repeat the process in a year or two.
Christopher Lloyd used to judge RHS Trials with me and others. He was known for his wit and no-nonsense opinions based not on fashion and conformity but on his own ideas. For a reason I have forgotten I (quietly) confessed to him that the obsession with snowdrops left me cold. He leant a little closer and whispered, “Galanthobores”. I smiled. There was a slight pause and he went on to say, “Not as bad as Hellebores”.
Now, there’s another subject for discussion.
