Scotland’s Snowdrop fans

It has been one of the coldest seasons in living memory and winter has not yet relinquished its grip, but deep in the Scottish woods something has been stirring.

In leafless glades, where sunlight can penetrate to the forest floor, the first of this year’s snowdrops have been opening. Small and delicate in appearance, with a faint scent of honey, the snowdrop has long been cherished for its simple beauty and its seeming ability to flourish in the face of adversity.

Cold weather may delay its flowering –-this year’s blooms were expected to appear around 10 days later than usual – but no matter how deep the snow, how sharp the frost or biting the wind, the snowdrop eventually emerges unscathed. Given a favourable spot in moist but not waterlogged soil, it will grow and spread, carpeting the ground with its white petals.

At this time of the year there is little that lifts the spirits quite so readily as spring’s smallest and pluckiest herald, but for some people this annual flowering isn’t just a welcome sign that spring is on its way – it is a hugely anticipated event in itself. These are the galanthophiles, people for whom the collecting and breeding of new and rare snowdrops is a consuming passion.

In February and March such enthusiasts can be found in snowdrop woods and in frozen gardens, peering closely at individual snowdrop plants. Many were also found last week at the Victoria Halls in Dunblane where the Scottish Rock Garden Club held its spring display.

Some of the finest snowdrops in cultivation have received plaudits here; snowdrops with names such as Alexander The Great and Lady Dalhousie, which has pointed petals, crisp markings and blue-green leaves.

Galanthophiles take their name from galanthus, the Latin nomenclature for the snowdrop. To the casual observer, there may be little to distinguish one snowdrop from its neighbour, but to galanthrophiles the minute inflections in leaf shape, markings and flower formation are as unique and fascinating as human DNA.

Among those in attendance at Dunblane was Sandy Leven, who, when he is not growing snowdrops or corresponding with fellow enthusiasts around the country, is a dentist. In his Dunblane garden he grows more than 40 varieties, each one nestling in its own clay pot in a series of covered alpine beds. Leven’s interest was sparked when, 15 years ago, he was given some unusual snowdrops.

Since then, Leven has built his sizeable collection. Among his favourites are Lady Elphinstone, which is a yellow variety with double flowers, and Merlin, which is completely green on the inside.

“Augustus Magnet is a very good snowdrop for anyone interested in growing them to start with,” he says. “It grows well and bulks

up very quickly.”

If snowdrops grew at the height of summer, says Leven, they wouldn’t attract such interest. “It is the fact that they come through the ground when there is very little else in flower that helps to make them so fascinating.”

Over the coming weeks galanthophiles such as Leven will be examining their collections closely for signs of new seedlings displaying previously unseen characteristics. These have the potential to be new varieties and, if they are exceptional, they could trade hands for serious sums of money. Last year one bulb was sold at a snowdrop auction for £150. However, the highest price ever recorded was the £226 paid for a single Galanthus Flocon de Neige in 2008.

Some of the stiffest trading takes place on the internet trading site Ebay where £36 was recently bid for a single bulb of Galanthus plicatus Bill Clark, and £53 for Galanthus elwesii Mr Blobby. To put those prices into perspective, £22 would buy you 100 bulbs of the most common snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, from a garden centre.

Jim Jermyn, show manager of Gardening Scotland, the national flower show held at Ingliston, Edinburgh, in June, is a dedicated galanthophile. In fact, he is responsible for naming and introducing to cultivation one of the most sought-after yellow varieties, Spindlestone’s Surprise, after he found it growing in the garden of a snowdrop enthusiast in Northumberland.

Jermyn also sits on the Royal Horticultural Society’s joint rock garden committee, which assesses snowdrops new to cultivation. At the moment, he is seriously considering whether or not to part with £70 for a poculiform – a rare snowdrop that is completely white.

“I know a spot in the Borders where a patch of poculiforms grows,” he says. “I’m going to visit in the next few weeks, but snowdrops are protected, so you cannot dig them up in the wild.”

But snowdrops are not truly wild, Jermyn explains.“They are not native to this country. They come from Turkey, Greece and the Caucasus. But two kinds in particular grow well here – Galanthus nivalis and Galanthus plicatus. When both species have been planted close to each other, they hybridise readily, producing the huge range of varieties.”

Like some form of speeded-up Darwinism, new variations of snowdrops keep appearing, and it is this constant change and supply that makes them irresistible for anyone with the collecting gene.

Some parts of the country produce more new varieties than elsewhere. Ian Christie, who runs Christie’s Alpine Nursery in Kirriemuir, Angus, discovered one now famous hotspot around 10 years ago, when he went to visit nearby Brechin Castle.

“I found fantastic colonies of Galanthus nivalis and Galanthus plicatus growing in close proximity,” he says.

Among the countless flowers spreading out under the trees, Christie discovered “hundreds of variations in inner markings, flower shape and size”.

Many of these have now been introduced to cultivation under the name of the Castle Group series and Christie, who finds more every year, is writing an account of their discovery for a new monograph on snowdrops being published by the Royal Horticultural Society.

At Brechin Castle, as at many other places across Scotland, the introduction of Galanthus plicatus has been attributed to soldiers bringing bulbs home in the 19th century when they returned from the Crimean War. Galanthus nivalis, meanwhile, is commonly believed to have arrived with the Romans, although Scotland’s leading snowdrop grower is not convinced. Lady Catherine Erskine of Cambo House in Kingsbarns, near St Andrews, says there is scant evidence to substantiate such claims. “Nothing was written about snowdrops before the 16th century,” she says. “There is no mention of them in Shakespeare.”

Whenever they arrived, Galanthus nivalis and many other snowdrops thrive in great numbers at Cambo House.

The snowdrop woods here, which extend to 70 acres, are believed to be the largest in the UK, and Lady Erskine’s collection of special snowdrops numbers more than 300.

In early spring, the landscape is transformed with snowdrops spreading in all directions for as far as the eye can see.

“There were already snowdrops here when I arrived,” says Lady Erskine. “There was a mania for snowdrops in the early Victorian period and they were planted in large numbers on many estates, but the snowdrops here were planted by my husband’s grandmother.

“During the 1930s, my husband’s father, along with his six sisters and one brother, would be sent out to lift and replant them. That’s what helped them to spread.”

In 1986, Lady Erskine established an award-winning mail-order business selling snowdrops “in the green”, which is when their flowers have started to fade, as these establish much more easily than dried bulbs. In 2001, she also opened the estate to visitors during snowdrop season.

Every year since, the number of visitors has increased. Recognising the potential, Lady Erskine, along with a small group of owners of gardens and estates that also opened for snowdrop enthusiasts, approached the tourism agency VisitScotland to ask for their marketing assistance. Three years on, the Scottish Snowdrop Festival now forms a major part of VisitScotland’s White Campaign, winning Lady Erskine a Scottish Thistle

tourism award.

Suzanne Cases of VisitScotland says: “There are a lot of people interested in gardens who had nowhere to go during the winter months so it has been very good for them, but the festival also appeals to families who want to get out and about in the fresh air and find something to do at weekends.”

More than 50 snowdrop gardens now open their doors to visitors as part of the festival and this year, for the first time, Cambo is also hosting a series of Snowdrops By Starlight evenings,, during which visitors will be able to wander through woodlands enjoying the added atmosphere of lighting and sound effects.

Many of the gardens that will open over the course of the next two weeks, when the snowdrops are at their height, will be part of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, which organises annual garden openings for charity. Among them is the garden belonging to Dr Evelyn Stevens, just a few miles from Dunblane.

Stevens first became interested in snowdrops in 1973 when she found some unusual specimens growing in her garden. Since then, she has raised several that have found their way into cultivation, including Galanthus Sophie North, which she named for one of the children who died in the Dunblane massacre of 1996. “At the time of the tragedy, my husband worked with Sophie’s father, Mick North,” she says.

Stevens is particularly fond of another flower she raised, a sturdy, late-flowering snowdrop called The Linns. She is unimpressed that another, which she named Sybil Roberta, after her mother, was claimed by individuals in the snowdrop fraternity to be no different from Dionysus. “I think it is slightly different,” she says.

Talking to enthusiasts, it soon becomes clear that everyone in the snowdrop world is connected, and far from paying big prices on the open market for their rare bulbs, many are simply swapped between friends.

In her own collection, Stevens has an example of a rare Galanthus woronowii with yellow markings which displays a small flower held above a tall stem.

The bulb was given to her by snowdrop-grower Elizabeth Harrison from Dundee, who also gifted some to Ian Christie in Kirriemuir.

While most snowdrops are currently just beginning to open, in Joan Gibb’s garden in Ayr one of her favourites has

already passed.

Among her collection of more than 30 varieties, Gibb, a retired teacher, grows Three Ships, which last year opened in November.Gibb has based her collection, she says, not on rarity or oddity but on what pleases her. “My husband would say that all snowdrops are the same, but when you look closely at them you realise that is not the case. It’s such a delight at this time of the year to find something in flower in the garden.”

Gibb insists she has her limits, setting herself a top price of £20 per bulb.“I may be obsessive, but I’m not mad,” she says.

While the prices paid for snowdrops might seem excessive, Jim Jermyn says they often reflect the time a grower has spent nurturing them in order to build up sufficient stocks

for sale. This process can take years, although it can be sped up through a technique called chipping.

“Chipping is when you take individual scales off a bulb and, so long as they have a tiny sliver of root attached to them, each scale should grow into a new bulb,” says Jermyn.

Over the next few weeks, growers, enthusiasts and collectors across the country will be getting down to ground level to marvel at the beauty contained with the tiny form of our earliest spring flower and to determine if, this year, they have on their hands a new variety that will go on to rock the snowdrop world.

WHERE TO SEE SNOWDROPS

Greenbank Garden, Clarkston, Glasgow

Enjoy the carpet of snowdrops in the dell. Open 9.30am-dusk. Admission: adults £5.50, children £4.50. Visit

www.nts.org.uk.

Culzean Castle and Country Park (NTS), Maybole, South Ayrshire

Carpets of snowdrops border the drive and woodland walk. Open 9.30am-dusk. Admission: adults £3.00, children £1.50. Visit

www.culzean experience.org.

Cambo House, Kingsbarns, Fife

Outstanding woodland walks to the sea, carpeted in snowdrops. Open 10am-5pm. Admission: £4. Visit www.camboestate.com and www.gardensof

scotland.org.

Cringletie House, near Peebles

The 28-acre grounds of this country house