Growers met at Colesbourne Park for the launch of a new snowdrop book.
The Galanthophiles’ Gathering
The temperatures may have been hovering around zero but nothing was going to stop the galanthophiles gathering at Colesbourne Park. They are, I decided, a little like the tiny flowers they worship – tough and seemingly impervious to the cold.
Snowdrop experts and collectors from across the country were at the Cotswold garden to celebrate The Galanthophiles, a new book that looks not so much at the flowers as the people behind them.
Among those braving the freezing weather were Joe Sharman, widely regarded as one of the country’s leading snowdrop collectors, and relatives of past galanthophiles, such Andrew Parker-Bowles, great nephew of EA Bowles.
Tomoko Miyashita had travelled furthest, coming over from Japan on her first visit to Colesbourne for seven years. She worked as a volunteer at the garden for many snowdrop seasons and G. plicatus ‘Tomoko’, discovered at Colesbourne, is named after her.
“I came because I love snowdrops,” she said, which seemed to be an idea common to everyone there.
After an introduction to the book by authors Jane Kilpatrick and Jennifer Harmer, we were given a brief overview of the garden by Sir Henry Elwes, whose great grandfather, Henry John Elwes, was one of the early galanthophiles. When Sir Henry and his wife, Carolyn, took over the estate, the snowdrops had been neglected for decades.
“I cannot tell you how many wheelbarrows full of rotting bulbs we took away as we dug up these clumps that had not been disturbed for 50 years,” Sir Henry told us.
Today, the collection is well managed with around 250 different varieties and a host of other plants – hellebore, cyclamen, dwarf iris – adding to the display.
“We’re not a snowdrop garden, we’re a spring garden now,” said Sir Henry.
Despite the snowdrops reluctant to wake up in the cold, there was still plenty to see, not least the beautiful blue lake (pictured top) whose striking colour is due to suspended clay particles in the water.
Either way, it was the perfect venue for a plant-lovers’ ‘club’ that is still going strong after 160 years.
The Galanthophiles book
(I was given a copy of ‘The Galanthophiles’ by Orphans Publishing in return for an unbiased review.)
Snowdrops are said to get more column inches of press than any other flower. Certainly, these tiny flowers inspire a devotion so intense their admirers have been given the collective name of galanthophiles.
It’s these devotees rather than the flowers themselves that are examined in The Galanthophiles, Jane Kilpatrick and Jennifer Harmer’s detailed overview of 160 years of snowdrop collecting.
What some might describe as the British obsession with snowdrops began when soldiers returning from the Crimean War brought back bulbs of G. plicatus. Realising that there was more to the snowdrop than the common G. nivalis, nurserymen and, just as importantly, amateur growers began collecting.
Concentrating on the major galanthophiles of each era, their inner circle and then the other enthusiasts of the time, the authors give a fascinating insight into the way these tiny bulbs have influenced British gardens.
It’s a story in which the Cotswolds has a sizeable role. It was home to many leading snowdrop growers, including Henry John Elwes, James Atkins and Leonard Mathias, who founded the Giant Snowdrop Company in 1952.
Along the way, we discover how familiar varieties were introduced, such as ‘Ophelia’, ‘Galatea’ and ‘Magnet’, and meet the people whose names live on in snowdrops: Lady Beatrix Stanley, Primrose Warburg and James Backhouse.
Both authors are historians and The Galanthophiles is written with an eye for detail and dates. We learn of the first ‘Snowdrop Conference’ hosted by the RHS in 1891 and the beginning of the ‘snowdrop lunches’ in the mid-seventies, which soon became “‘red-letter’ days for galanthophiles, who braved whatever the weather had in store for them”.
What stops it being a dry, date-driven account is the way they bring their subjects to life with anecdote and personal detail. We learn, for example, that Primrose Warburg was an ‘inveterate list-maker’ who was also “intimidating and could be very fierce”.
From the start, devotees swapped bulbs either to obtain another variety for their collection, or to safeguard something rare. Weather, unfavourable growing conditions and the much-feared snowdrop fungus, Botrytis galanthina, all periodically hit private collections and the book is filled with pleas for bulbs to replace those lost.
James Allen’s sizeable collection was just one devastated by disease in 1889 and the book tells us that: “The fact that some of Allen’s snowdrops still survive today we owe to his understanding that the only way to protect rare plants is to give them away.”
It’s a practice that still goes on today with collectors regularly swapping bulbs and making sure that varieties are grown in more than one place in their gardens.
As Colesbourne’s head gardener, Arthur Cole, told galanthophiles at the book’s launch “Snowdrops are rather like eggs, you don’t keep them all in the same basket.”
• The Galanthophiles by Jane Kilpatrick and Jennifer Harmer is published by Orphans Publishing, RRP £45. You can buy it from Amazon for £29.24 here (if you buy through this link, I will receive a small payment. The amount you pay is not affected.)
• Read more of my garden and gardening-related book reviews here.
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