Electric Green

A letter to my snowdrop-loving friends, after E. A. Bowles ; My Dear Galanthophil*, I am writing to you in some excitement: my book, The Plant Lover’s Guide to Snowdrops is finally released in the UK. By now you may even have a copy, in which case I hope you are enjoying it. There are, as you know, different sorts of books on Galanthus : The terribly serious academic ones, the terribly gorgeous arty ones, and mine. So what’s it all about? Well may you ask. Cover image is G. nivalis 'Blonde Inge' As a lover of snowdrops since childhood, I was thrilled to be approached by Timber Press to contribute to their new Plant Lover’s Guides series. But this is a plant we all know so well; what could be new and different, what could I do that was reasonably comprehensive but also engaging and fun? My first point of reference was the idea of ‘love’. People love for many reasons. The object may be beautiful or it may bestow hope and strength. There may be happy ass...

 Spreads of snowdrop Galanthus nivalis at Welford Park in Berkshire  Anyway, there I was at 7am last Saturday listening to one of those compilations with a title like 'The Essential Power of Ultimate Music, Ever', on my way to a hot date to talk gardening with BBC Radio Berkshire, when up pops Alice Cooper’s ‘Poison’. You know: I want to love you but I better not touch (Don't touch) /I want to hold you but my senses tell me to stop/I want to kiss you but I want it too much (Too much) /I want to taste you but your lips are venomous poison. etc. Driving when one should be sleeping leaves plenty if time to be pedantic about artistic licence. As any fule kno, but possibly not as any snake-fancying rock icon kno, poison is not in itself venomous. Venomous animals use fangs or a sting to inject their venom which is a biotoxin. Poisons can be absorbed, ingested or inhaled and need not be organic. Technically, wasps are venomous while poison arrow frogs are, well, poisono...

When it comes to plants I wear my heart on my sleeve. If I look at something in depth and it fires my interest I want it. Or them. All of them, probably. That one and that one and that one. This can be impractical – Walnut trees, for example. Ancient yew trees. Potatoes. Fortunately, my current passion is for snowdrops. Having recently visited a number of snowdrop gardens including Welford Park , Kingston Bagpuize and the national collection at Colesbourne Park I am now thoroughly converted. Details of my pilgrimage can be found in the Jan 2nd 2010 issue of Amateur Gardening magazine, but it turns out that snowdrops are more than short, white and quite pretty when there is not much else to look at. They are not keen on deep shade (oh!), they have a vast natural variation (really?) and, as I was emphatically told by Colesbourne’s snowdrop supremo John Grimshaw, the planting-in-the-green thing is a myth. Move ‘em in summer, apparently. It goes against everything I have ever been told, bu...