Snowdrop gardens on television

[Tim Ingram]

Carolyn - it's a stimulating garden isn't it. Brigitte says she does really well with hepaticas too. Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin' grows quite well with us but I have had similar experience as you have with many of the reticulatas - they do OK for a season or two and then decline. One group of 'Clairette' has grown more successfully in an area liberally top-dressed with pea gravel. By coincidence I have just picked up a plant of Galanthus 'Walker Canada' from Richard Bashford at the Myddelton House Snowdrop Sale! Richard says what a fine plant it is and also prduces good seedlings, so I greatly look forward to growing it.

[Alan_b]

I have had similar experience as you have with many of the reticulatas - they do OK for a season or two and then decline.

Last year I went to a talk by Toronto-based expert Alan McMurtrie.  My impression is that what you describe is normal for these plants (in cultivation) unless they are dug-up and replanted. 

[Tim Ingram]

Here is another, longer, video which introduces snowdrops rather well (I'm not too sure about the short section a little way in?). It is nicely produced and if you watch towards the end there is a fine plant of Helleborus thibetanus; a good celebration of snowdrops in a plants-persons garden which could easily (with the same care and imagination) be extended to the woodland garden to come:

[Carolyn Walker]

Another fun video, Tim.  I thought again what an under-appreciated snowdrop 'Viridapice' is, so striking.  I had a good laugh when they called 'Augustus' beautiful (which it is) and then compared the outer segments to a golf ball.  I guess you have to be a golfer to appreciate that.

Maxine, I second your motion to have Alan present a series, the longer the better, on snowdrops.  You know I am one of his biggest fans.