A delicate beauty

Snowdrops have drawn huge interest in recent years with the discovery of hundreds of new hybrids, writes FIONNUALA FALLON

Their snow-white flowers are the ghostly, graceful harbingers of spring, botanical miniatures whose shy beauty has brought generations of gardeners – literally – to their knees.

For Dr John Grimshaw, the British botanist, all-round-plantsman and co-author of the definitive guide Snowdrops: A Monograph of Cultivated Galanthus, his long love affair with these bulbous plants first began at the tender age of five when his family moved house. The Grimshaw’s new garden in Maidenhead, Berkshire came with a well-established patch of Galanthus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’, the common double snowdrop whose tightly ruffled and ornately marked inner tepals resemble a tiny tutu.

“It became a yearly ritual, that trip to the bottom of the garden to see how they were doing.” Later, as a young Oxford undergraduate (where he gained a first-class degree in Botany), Grimshaw was introduced to the “old school of galanthophiles”, a distinguished group of plantspeople that included the botanists Richard Nutt and Primrose Warburg. Soon he was being invited to their snowdrop lunches, convivial occasions where a small but dedicated group of fellow enthusiasts swapped information and plants. “It was a hell of an education,” he remembers.

“But back then it was a gentleman’s hobby, no money exchanged hands. So while I’m very glad that a lot of people have become interested in snowdrops in recent years, I rather regret the fact that so often it’s meant putting a price on them.”

Grimshaw, as he points out himself, indirectly shares some of the blame for this. The book that he co-authored with fellow British galanthophiles Matt Bishop and Aaron Davis and which was published in 2002, formally codified, for the first time, a vast body of information on the subject. “We brought together a lot of ‘floating’ information which finally made it possible for gardeners to check facts. As a result, you often hear the book referred to as the galanthophile’s bible.”

At present, he’s working on a sequel due for publication in 2015. While the first book covered almost 500 snowdrop hybrids and cultivars, the second will profile roughly three times that number, a measure of how the mania for collecting has resulted in the introduction of so many new snowdrops.

“Writing the second book has meant playing what sometimes feels like a never-ending game of catch-up. We’re plagued by new names, some of snowdrops that really aren’t all that interesting, given by gardeners who haven’t been discriminating or selective enough. All snowdrops are pretty flowers, but some are better left in the hedge than brought into the garden.”

There are also the genuinely “new” snowdrops, including the exciting discovery only last year of a new species, G. panjutinii – so new that Grimshaw has yet to see it in the flesh.

Grimshaw’s private snowdrop collection includes a couple of hundred different cultivars and hybrids. Amongst his favourites is Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’, a large-flowered, sweetly scented snowdrop first introduced into cultivation by the Scottish gardener Samuel Arnott in the late 19th century but still considered a classic. It’s also a snowdrop with particular historical resonance for Grimshaw; over a century ago, Arnott gave it to the distinguished galanthophile Henry Elwes, who grew it in his garden at Colesbourne Park in Gloucestershire.

Elwes called it Arnott’s Seedling but in the 1950s the late, great plantsman E A Bowles (another noted galanthophile) renamed it as G. ‘S Arnott’. Four generations later, Henry Elwes’s great-grandson (also named Henry) invited Grimshaw to become garden manager of Colesbourne, including its vast snowdrop collection, a job he carried out for almost a decade and with great aplomb, until he left last year to take on the role of director of the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust in Yorkshire. His job aside, Grimshaw is also in great demand on the international lecture circuit. Next week he’ll travel to Co Carlow, where he’ll be giving a talk as part of the one-day Snowdrop Gala organised by nurseryman Robert Miller and Cork gardener Hester Forde. He’ll also be taking a keen interest in some of the Irish snowdrop cultivars on display at the event.

Asked whether he has any tips for aspiring Irish galanthophiles hopeful of discovering interesting new snowdrops, Grimshaw advises that the richest hunting grounds are old gardens. “Anywhere they’ve been grown for a long time, where they’ve had a chance to set seed, to clump up. The other thing is to try not to be too obsessive. Speaking for myself, I’d rather see a great sweep of a common species than a ‘graveyard’ of individually labelled rarities.”

Dr John Grimshaw’s top 10 snowdrops

‘S. Arnott’

‘Primrose Warburg’

‘Comet’

‘Hippolyta’

‘Three Ships’

‘Diggory’

‘George Elwes’

‘E A Bowles’

‘Green Tear’

‘South Hayes’

DATE FOR YOUR DIARY

The Laois -based French horticulturist Tanguy de Toulgoët is running a host of interesting courses at Dunmore Country School this year, including Start Your Garden From Scratch, Saturday, February 16th. See dunmorecountryschool.ie for details.