Snowdrop Gardens visited during 2008

[David Nicholson]

Final batch. By the way 'Rs' in the title of each picture is just my way of recognising files I have re-sized for posting and are not my attempt to rename all the 'snowies'.

[Maggi Young]

Look at the ovaries swelling already in the pic of G. White Wings..... I see some of the flowers are going over but the clump looks fairly fresh but there have obviously been some pollinators about.

The house has been on the market a while.....perhaps it it the thought of paying that much for somewhere that is expected to be open to the public..... £1.6 m is a lot to pay for a little business!!

[Lvandelft]

The house has been on the market a while.....perhaps it it the thought of paying that much for somewhere that is expected to be open to the public..... £1.6 m is a lot to pay for a little business!!

It's a bargain Maggi, you get all the snowdrops for free then.
Sell them on E-bay and even some profit is looking round the corner.

Martin its always nice to see these plants in old gardens. Thank you.

[Maggi Young]

Luit, you are such an entrepreneur !

[Alan_b]

...It's a bargain Maggi, you get all the snowdrops for free then.
Sell them on E-bay and even some profit is looking round the corner.

Say you could get ebay inflated prices of £20 per bulb, that's still 80,000 bulbs you need to sell on ebay to recoup your £1.6m!  Thats an awful lot of trips down the garden and then down the post office!  If you sold 10 bulbs a day, every day throughout the year, it would take you 8,000 days or about 22 years.

[Maggi Young]

Hmmm! But your local Post Office would be glad of the business, eh?

[Lvandelft]

And it would keep you out of the pub..... and save a lot of money over the first year again. 
You see I'm used to count my coins.    

[Paddy Tobin]

Maggi,

You and my wife has something in common. When I read  your comment on the price of the house - and then to have to open it to the public I felt I was hearing an echo from Mary in the armchair in the corner here. It seems that £1.6 million doesn't buy you privacy. Though if one had that money to spend I'm sure a high wall and strong gates would not be beyond the budget. Personally, I would add barbed wire to the top of the wall and several dogs inside the gate.

Paddy

[Maggi Young]

An Englishman's home may be his castle, but it looks like the Irish and the Scots are the ones pulling up the drawbridge!   

[Paddy Tobin]

And I'd nail it up.

Paddy

[Maggi Young]

No need, Paddy, they'll never get across the shark infested moat 

[Paddy Tobin]

Yeah, I suppose you're right.

Having friends visit is a great pleasure as is visiting friends but the thought of the general public coming to my garden gives me the shivers. Yeeeuuuuuuggggggghhhhhh


Paddy

[mark smyth]

no coffee shop! I was looking forward to coffee and a slice on arrival on Friday. Are the gardeners there?

[KentGardener]

What a great two weeks this is turning out to be for seeing snowdrops.  As mentioned before, last week was a visit to Phil Cornish, followed by Colesbourne Park.

Yesterday, the sun shone after an utterly wet and miserable few days, and the driver and I headed off to Essex.  Thanks to Brian Ellis, we were in the fortunate few who had tickets for a charity opening at Glen Chantry (Wickham Bishops, Essex) in aid of the Alpine Garden Society.  This wonderful garden, on a 3 acre West facing site, has been developed by Wol and Sue Staines since 1976.  Glen Chantry is usually open for visitors from April to September and has a well stocked, and reasonable priced, plant nursery on site.

Although we got stuck in a mile long queue to get through the Dartford Tunnel Thames crossing, we still managed to arrive at our destination thirty minutes in advance of the scheduled 13.30 opening, there was plenty of parking available on site.  It was now time to enter our second queue of the day.  This one was forming at the gate to the garden and consisted of a well wrapped and friendly bunch of plants people.  Wol said we must all be suffering from white fever as he hadn’t seen so many people queuing outside his garden in the last 30 years.

(KentGardener returning from a wander, with Glen Chantry behind)



As the gate opened we all walked (not ran!) to two polly tunnels that had been set aside for the sale of snowdrops.  The main target for most, was the tunnel containing Sue and Wol’s surplus snowdrops at one end and Rod and Jane Leeds snowdrops at the other.  Mr and Mrs Staines have been growing snowdrops for at least 30 years and are keen on ‘twin scaling’.  This process is the only way they could get enough plants to fill their huge garden.  Fortunately for us they had decided to do something they do not usually do – and that was sell a limited amount to us as very reasonable prices.

I, myself, poked my head into this, the most popular tunnel and turned straight around – there were people at least 4 deep at the sales table – a little too frantic for me.  Instead, I headed into the other tunnel which had been allocated to Joe Sharmon and found myself buying a couple of rather nice plants: Trym which I have been after for years, and a Yellow plicatus called Madelaine.

(A view of a border)



What a treat we had in store: it was now time for the garden (and for the driver, CAKE(s)).  There are snowdrops everywhere you look and at least 95% are in large clumps.  I started by wandering around with Brian Ellis and our two ‘drivers’, but soon found myself befriended by some ‘lurkers’ of this forum.  The lurkers in question were Cliff Curtis, his wife and daughter.  A nicer family one couldn’t hope to meet.  Cliff and his daughter were extremely knowledgeable on Galanthus (and for those admiring ‘Peardrop’ on another thread, it was Cliff who originally found this plant which he informs me that it is highly scented).  Brian and David wandered away to take photographs (hopefully to be posted here soon?….)  and my long suffering driver Ian, having had his fill of snowdrops in the first 30 minutes headed straight for the tea and cakes; to have his fill of them too!   

After another half an hour I headed back to Wol and Sue’s sales tunnel to find the thronging mass had somewhat dissipated.  The stock available was obviously diminished but there were still some very nice plants to be found.  I purchased a ‘David Baker’ for £20 and the lady next to me was pleased to find ‘Pride O the Mill’ at £15.  I wonder what other beauties were available for this who had the elbows to venture in at the start?….

I hope you have enjoyed my brief account of the day and with luck, some of the other SRGC’ers in attendance (Brian Ellis, David Quinton, Alan_B and a good few others I am sure) will post their own pictures soon.

(Cicely Hall)




(Pride o' the Mill)

 



I know that Wol and Sue have said that this was a one off event - but I do so hope I get the chance to visit Glen Chantry again during the snowdrop season.

John

p.s. Hopefully I may get the chance to post some more pictures at lunchtime - best I do some work now!

[Paddy Tobin]

Great start, John.

The garden views are excellent. It's obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Staines have a very high standard of maintenance. Even my wife would compliment those trimmed edges to the lawns.

I'm sure you also found also that Wol was the kind of person who would make your visit very enjoyable. He is a very pleasant person, great chatter and perfectly as ease with his successes and failures.

Looking forward to your follow-up postings and those from the other visitors and you might even have convinced Cliff Curtis and family to join us on the forum. Such an enthusiast would be very welcome.

Paddy