The snowdrops are in full flower their seemingly delicate bells nodding in the vigorous wind that is the last gasp of the third great storm to batter the garden. Only seemingly because they are as tough as tempered steel as they shoot up through frozen soil.
Snowdrops aren’t true natives for these great survivors broke out of our gardens centuries ago and now they are ‘naturalised’ appearing in fat clumps beneath roadside hedges and drifting down grassy banks.
In my garden I look through the great arch that leads to the orchard and snowdrops lie like drifts of snow. To give them their Latin name, these are Galanthus nivalis with great clumps of the double G. nivalis ‘flora pleno’ mingled in. I do love these doubles for their inner tunic is so crammed with petals that they stick out like tutus on a ballerina. In the very centre of the arch there is an imposing drift that stands head and shoulders above the rest and these are either ‘S. Arnott’ or ‘Brenda Troyle’ for I have both and they have mixed and mingled all along this side of the hedge until I…
