Lead up the Garden Path

To a lot of people snowdrops are all the same, I thought this for many, many years, until I once visited a garden which had lots of really different varieties and fell under their spell. There are still species snowdrops to be bought, but mainly these days the bulbs that are bought are the many hybrids that are produced, sometimes by seeding naturally, sometimes by selective breeding. Some bulbs cost a small fortune, upwards of £300, but a lot can be bought quite reasonably, thank goodness. I only ever buy one of each variety, then wait for them to bulk up, some do so much quicker than others. Snowdrops vary in the length of the flower stem, in the colour of the leaves, how the leaves are joined to the stem, are the leaves pleated or not, are they twisted, and how fat or thin are the leaves. The flowers can be single or double, and the marks on the inner petals vary considerably. Some hybrids have markings on the outer petals and some have yellow markings where all the others are green. In spite of all this, the wild snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, looks wonderful when spreading in drifts in a woodland setting. This year, because of the mild winter that most of us have been experiencing, the hybrid snowdrops are 2 to 3 weeks ahead of where they would normally be, but the wild ones seem to be about the same as usual, they are here anyway.This post will be about the hybrids that are out at the moment, I will do a post later about the wild ones and the later hybrids. I will start with Atkinsii which was flowering just after Christmas and is now just starting to go over. This one bulks up quite quickly and is good for selling at open days when raising funds for charity, quite a tall variety.

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