It’s almost Valentine’s Day and ahead of its heels is the perfect weekend for some romantic snowdrop spotting.

The countryside is carpeted in these small, elegant, Giselle white flowers which are the first signs that the season is turning and spring will come. Whether you seek the expansive and breathtaking or the rare and ravishing, now is the moment to hunt down our native snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in the wild or the glorious gardens of galanthophiles which are open for the public to visit to enjoy their sheer beauty and fragility.

Where to Spot

Fortunately snowdrops grow happily all over the UK. A walk in the wild or a drive along a country lane is sometimes all you need to catch glimpses of clumps and carpets under beech woods, amongst hazel or on the edge of woodland. I remember when I first moved out of London being in awe of the snowdrops growing along the verges in the Candover valley in Hampshire. I had that same thrill this week when I visited a clients’ garden and saw a large and unexpected drift of snowdrops on the other side of their lane.

Alternatively churches and churchyards seem to gather snowdrops where they naturalise undisturbed. The grounds of Walsingham Abbey are spectacular for the 18 acres of snowdrops which have naturalised at scale and well worth a snowdrop walk. Closer to my home is Welford Park where the scale of snowdrops is equally famous.

Many snowdrop gardens are open this weekend under the National Garden Scheme as part of their annual snowdrop festival. There are 100 to choose from! It’s fun to get outside, and garden enthusiasts will enjoy the snowdrops as much as the gardening tips from seeing a perfectly trained climbing rose, a tightly clipped topiary garden or a beautifully mulched herbaceous border as conscientious gardeners have prepared their gardens for the public.

Snowdrop Combinations

And if inspiration is your thing, there’s nothing nicer than seeing how other enthusiasts have combined their snowdrop collections with other seasonal plants and winter flowering shrubs and bulbs for impact and interest. Cornus, daphne, lonicera, hellebore, sarcococca all make wonderful companions to snowdrops and offer scent as well as interest to bring a winter garden to life. Plant these scented shrubs close to a frequently-used outside door and the perfume will make you happy when it’s dreary outside and the snowdrops will make you smile as they sparkle.

Alternatively brighten your hedges with some snowdrop underplanting in their ‘down time’. Here, my clever neighbour has planted a mix of Galanthus nivalis and Galanthus ‘Flore Pleno’, the pretty crinolined double snowdrop, under her beech (Fagus sylvatica) hedge. It’s all in the detail!

And the classic combination is to grow winter aconites (Eranthus hyemalis) with snowdrops as their sunshine yellow petals illuminate and reflect light on their slightly taller, paler snowdrop cousins. This pairing naturalises brilliantly if you are lucky and makes the most beautiful carpet in the first few weeks of February.

More unusual and incredibly pretty is to plant snowdrops with the curling bright pink petals of Cyclamen coum. This planting combination, first seen in an old stone trough filled with the slightly taller Galanthus ‘Sam Arnott’ watching overhead, shared by the Bannermans, is quite charming.

Snowdrop Stars

Or you can make your snowdrops the stars of the show.

If you’re a serious galanthophile (snowdrop lover), and let’s face if you’ve paid almost £1,000 for a rare bulb, you’ll want to show your snowdrops off. (Forget tulip mania, snowdrop mania is the modern craze.)

At Rodmarton Manor, they have a different variety of snowdrop in every square of a symmetrically planted garden, with both a specimen tree and a snowdrop or three per square. I loved it, but I had to get on my hands and knees to appreciate the beauty of each variety.

Even cleverer is the snowdrop theatre at Thenford which is a sensation, tucked in a corner of the walled garden, and packed with snowdrops perfectly presented and at eye level. The dark backdrop, the perfectly painted theatre to complement the snowdrops, showed off this collection admirably. And at eye level!

Snowdrops in the Green

If all this snowdrop spotting has given you a taste to plant your own snowdrops or branch out beyond the ordinary and not to be sniffed at Galanthus nivalis, you should purchase and plant your snowdrops ‘in the green’. This means before the leaves wilt away, roughly between now and Easter at the very latest. But beware snowdrops are expensive, and that includes the ordinary. Make sure you buy your bulbs from a specialist supplier, with good provenance, such as Avon Bulbs, Hayloft, Morla Plants . It’s illegal to dig up snowdrops in the wild.

Easier and cheaper is to find a friend and help them split their snowdrops (in the green) and receive a few in exchange. Snowdrops will bulk up incredibly quickly if they are happy. So if you split over several years, you will soon have a carpet. Splitting is super easy: you dig up a clump, break apart the bulbs with your fingers, replant a few in a naturalistic way and then move on and plant a few more, digging up and splitting as you go.

Snowdrop Season

And before you know it, the snowdrops will be gone, so do get out there when you can. Of course, you can extend your snowdrop season with early, middle and late varieties, but I love their seasonality and that they offer the first signs of spring. So enjoy your snowdrop spotting over the next few days and I’d love to hear where you go spotting.