Winter Joy
To most of us, all snowdrops look more-or-less the same. But surprisingly, there are 20 species and over 2,000 named varieties. Who would have thought this possible … a small plant consisting of a few slender green leaves and pendulous white three-petalled flowers, that likes to form great drifts just like bluebells do a few of months later. For reasons lost in the mists of time, some growers became very interested in this little plant and they began to search for variations occurring in nature and also to breed their own varieties. We now call people with this passion, ‘Galanthophiles’ after the Latin name for the plant – Galanthus. The rest, as they say, is history!
Some of the rarest bulbs can now change hands for over £1,500! Apparently Tulips were once worth more than their weight in gold, so maybe the price of rare snowdrops today is not so unusual. And when one thinks about a breeding programmes running over many, many years, perhaps the price is even cheap! Apparently there are breeders right now attempting to grow a yellow snowdrop – goodness knows what this could be worth – enough to retire on probably! Although there are now varieties available with hints of yellow in the foliage and stems, visible as the plant grows, the flowers of these plants remain stubbornly white! Maybe that is how it should be.
The search for a yellow snowdrop!
I recently visited Cambo Gardens in Fife, which holds an annual Snowdrop Festival and is home to the Plant Heritage national collection, with over 200 varieties. It is one of my favourite gardens with its own very unusual ‘sense-of-place’ … where nature and the manmade elements co-exist in harmony – maybe nature even has the upper-hand here-and-there! There is little sense of competition between the garden and the natural world that it inhabits. This may be because the garden as a whole has evolved over many decades. Perhaps it has grown into the landscape itself, absorbing the terrain, the rambling farm buildings, the stables and the cottages in piecemeal-fashion. In this sense it is slightly eclectic and all the better for it. The walled garden is not flat but unusually, it slopes from opposite sides towards the deep cut of the Cambo Burn, which bisects it. The burn then meanders on through the rest of the garden and woodlands, all the way to the nearby beach where it disappears into the shingle, seaweed and sand. If a visitor follows the path through the woods, this is where they will end up - rather special!
Combo Gardens reach down to the sea
On my visit the snowdrops were only just beginning to appear, so I did not have the chance to enjoy the spectacle of great drifts of open flowers carpeting the banks and slopes beside the burn. But as can be seen in the next photo, they were beginning to appear. Next time!
All-to-often estate gardens and especially woodlands, appear to me to be over-managed. There is a modern craze for ‘woodland management’ which is doing untold harm to many of our woodlands. Almost always, the best form of management is actually to simply keep out and let nature get on with it – to let plants wither and fall over naturally during the winter months. All too often ‘nature’ becomes the equivalent of the ‘canary-in-a-cage’ – superficially pretty to look at, but unable to fly. It should really be the other way around, where our own interventions are kept to the minimum. Cambo is currently closer to this ideal. In SeeHow, our illustrations deliberately show the winter ‘life’ of many plants because their usefulness does not end when they cease to flower. Biodiversity needs winter structure. We should all try to be less ‘tidy’ in our gardens.
Cambo walled garden - a very beautiful sea of plants left un-cut over winter
In addition to Snowdrops, there are plenty of other winter-flowering plants to be seen at Cambo. Hellebores (many different colours), Iris unguicularis (blue / purple) and Eranthis hyemalis (bright yellow) can be found throughout, adding winter colour. The Eranthis looked particularly effective, spreading to form beds of yellow flowers with bright green leafy bracts, about 10cm off the ground - some of them running amongst the snowdrops.
SeeHow includes all of the above plants and also has crocuses and cyclamen. SeeHow also includes several taller woody shrubs which offer winter colour too and also winter scent! Lonicera X Purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’ is deciduous and produces highly scented white flowers before the leaves start to appear in early spring. Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’ makes a beautiful evergreen specimen plant, with a bewitching scent. Both of these shrubs are best planted next to a footpath, door or window, garden seat, so the scent can be enjoyed when passing.
The highly scented flowers of Lonicera X Purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’
Foliage is an often-forgotten source of colour and texture. The photo below shows feathery ferns and slender wild grasses (weeds to some), providing different shades of green and types of movement in the wind, while the red stems of dogwood shine brightly when they catch the sun. The large broad leaves of Bergenia cordifolia (also pink flowers in springtime) add a completely different texture and Helleborus argutifolius has pale yellow flowers above spiny-toothed leaves - both included in SeeHow.
The gusty wind had flattened the old grass stems and turned over a few of the Bergenia leaves, revealing their colourful deep pink undersides.
The above Text and all Photographs are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.