Amid all this bad weather, which though wet is mild, plants in the garden are growing and the snowdrops are pushing through the waterlogged soil. There are many clumps of the ordinary snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) in the garden and they have not been divided for many years. The clumps are dense and offsets, young bulbs, are stacked above the old bulbs, in many cases pushing through the soil surface where they then become dislodged and roll over the surface to make new clumps.

It helps the bulbs and helps to create a carpet of white if you divide the bulbs. The best time to do this is after flowering, as the foliage starts to yellow. But this is usually the busiest time in the garden, at least for me with thousands of young plants to look after. So I have been dividing them while they are in bloom. Now this is not the best time because bulb roots do not branch when they are cut and this will affect the growth of the bulbs a little but I sometimes take the pragmatic view of these things and think it is better to do it than to forget and end up not doing it! * I brought some snowdrops here from home last year, some rare doubles, and they were planted as single bulbs. The fact that this year they have produced one or two flowers per bulb shows that they were not affected too badly despite being lifted in flower, have their roots washed and spending two days wrapped in kitchen roll.

I have divided the clumps and replanted in groups of three to five bulbs, mostly at 30cm intervals in irregular groups, some in grass under acers and here in some new beds. This was taken immediately after planting but already the leaves have straightened and the flowers opened, on the few warm days.

It is always worth buying snowrops ‘in the green’, as growing plants rather than as dry bulbs.

All the snowdrops in the garden are the common snowdrop so I bought a few pots of Galanthus elwesii which often has larger flowers, with more extensive green markings on the inner segments, and beautiful, large blue-green foliage.

Galanthus elwesii

* I would not play so fast and loose with the rules with ‘special’ snowdrops, which can cost large sums of money!

galanthus elwesii, galanthus nivalis, snowdrops