Snowdrops

For my birthday, Liz gave me a 'voucher' for an order of snowdrops, leaving it to me to decide on exactly what I wanted. Accordingly, a week or two ago, I ordered a thousand single snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), and five hundred doubles (G. n. 'Flora Plena'), which arrived on Tuesday. They're from a nursery in Wisbech, outside Cambridge: their season is, of course, a bit advanced on ours, so although our snowdrops are still in flower, theirs have gone over. The flowers are turning into seedheads, but the leaves will remain for a few weeks more, building storage carbohydrate levels in the bulb, ready for next year. The lifting, sorting, and shipping will, inevitably, stress the plants rather badly, but it's arguably the best way to buy them. The packs of bulbs you find in the garden centre in the autumn don't tend to have received the best storage, having been lifted and graded, packed into plastic bags, and then distributed to shops, where they might then spend some time in the too-warm interior of the garden centre. By the time they're bought, and finally returned to the soil, they're all too often dry and dead, or at least badly stressed, and can take years to establish.

The snowdrops we planted like this, in a pot in our old garden, took several years before they flowered at all—in fact, I think it was only after their second year that we were even sure they were growing at all. Fortunately, they now grace our front garden, under the acer there.

Snowdrops in the front garden (© Ian 2014)

If you're a galanthophile, and are obtaining a rarer, sought-after form, then buying them in pots in the autumn is probably the absolute best. However, only the fancy varieties are really available like this—the ones that sell at several pounds per bulb. We need spring bulbs by the hundred, if not the thousand: we've probably planted getting on for three thousand in this garden—daffodils, scilla, puschkinia, crocuses, fritillaries, in the main—and I reckon we need at least twice as many again. Then there's the hillside, which will need its own several-thousand-bulb planting.

There's no way we can spend several pounds per bulb, and I don't think you need to, to enjoy the sight of a drift of snowdrops. Additionally, many of the collectors' forms are doubles, which aren't as good for insects, although they are pretty. So plenty of common singles, and a good chunk of the basic double, is the way we've gone.

They're classic woodland plants, completing their flowering and growth in a quick cycle as soon as possible in late winter, and before deciduous trees and shrubs come into leaf, reducing light levels. Although I'd be just as happy scattering them throughout the garden, we've started, therefore, by planting about 350 of the doubles in the copse bed of the garden, were they'll rub shoulders with crocuses, witch-hazel, and dogwoods. Some more (the rest of the doubles) have gone along either side of the willow tunnel over the septic tank. We then planted about 150 singles in the quince bed, along with ten G. plicatus 'Warham', which were a free gift (quite generously, as they appear to retail at £4 per bulb...), before taking the rest of the tray up to the birch clearing on the hillside. We planted a load of Midwinter Fire dogwoods up there early in December, and the snowdrops have gone around and amongst these and the eponymous stand of silver birches. At the moment, these all look a lot like little tufts of grass, but each is really a dozen or so deep-planted bulbs. Although, no doubt, we'll lose some of them, hopefully within a year, or two, there'll be plenty of flowers.

Planting the snowdrops took us up to lunch time, having got an early start and made the most of the cooler misty morning (hot sunny weather wouldn't be good for the bare-rooted bulbs). About the same time, a delivery of mulch (composted 'forestry products' (bark, I reckon) and manure (horse, by my reckoning), from the ever-reliable Tommy Topsoil) arrived, and was tipped onto the driveway. This afternoon we moved about a quarter/a third of this to fill up the vegetable beds. More will go around the fruit trees on the hillside at the weekend, and the rest will go on flower beds. The fruit beds might get compost, instead, and we plan to repeat the approach of last year, putting down compost, then cardboard, then chippings. The weeding in these beds was then negligible all year, which was much better—and I don't think it's a coincidence that we 

had no sign of sawfly (technically birch sawfly, in previous years), as the larvae pupate underground, and I think the mulch might stop them emerging, reducing populations.

Lastly, while Liz got started on the year's weeding (pond end of the long border), I mowed the lawn for the first time. Since reducing the mowing to around the quince/sweetpea bed, the slope at the foot of the drive, round the pond, and the games lawn, it's a much more manageable job, taking about an hour this time. No doubt it'll look a bit yellowed (and I'll have missed a few strips), but it already looks neater.