Imagine 1500 different snowdrops, roaming around an arboretum. Sometimes a new one joins, sometimes a group is divided, sometimes one just wanders off on its own. You need a snowdrop shepherd and at Thenford Arboretum that is Emma Thick.

This is the perfect time to grow our knowledge about snowdrops and I think I have found the perfect person, a galanthophile, to help us. If you know the podcast well, you won't be surprised that I am drawn to an expert because in my experience their passion for the plant can prove contagious.

So if you want to know which snowdrop to buy, when or where to plant it, how they spread and why they can sometimes be miffy - well you have come to the right podcast!

My guests are Emma Thick, a gardener and Rupert Heseltine whose parents developed this garden and I met them both at Thenford Arboretum.

The book I mention is called Thenford - The Creation of an English Garden by Michael & Anne Heseltine

Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy

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Sally Flatman: 00:00:20

Welcome to the first offshoot of this; Our Plant Stories season. What's an offshoot? Well, plant stories and the people I meet just lead to more stories and more plant people. So I call these episodes offshoots.

And it's probably worth following the podcast so you don't miss them when they pop up. I'm guessing that many of us have welcomed the arrival of snowdrops this month, but have you ever wondered how they spread?

Emma Thick: 00:00:46

There's a little tiny sort of tail on the seed which is like a protein that the ants love. So the ant will come along, find the seed and go, oh my God, what a tasty snack. Takes it back under the ground just where the seed wants to be.

The seed is happy as Larry, the little protein tail gets eaten off. The ant is happy, the seed is under the ground. And that's how they spread with, with ants.

Sally Flatman: 00:01:10

I'd like you to meet Emma Thick. Now, I always ask people how they would like to be introduced.

Emma Thick: 00:01:16

I do not like being called the Snowdrop Queen, that's for sure. I much prefer a snowdrop shepherd. I like to look over them and shepherd them rather than rule them.

Sally Flatman: 00:01:26

So I should call Emma the Snowdrop shepherd. And she has a lot of shepherding to do for as you will discover, it's a very big flock.

eseltine. They moved there in: 1976

I found a book they had written telling the story. I'll put a link in the show notes. Emma and I were standing beside an auricular theatre that was filled with Galanthus or snowdrops.

Emma Thick: 00:02:00

We've got everything from snowdrops that sort of stand 30, 40 centimeters high to something that's no bigger than 10 centimeters. We've got doubles, singles, yellows, green tipped, recurved petals of egret, green leafed of things like Scaramouche.

Got some hybrids, we've got some species. Basically it's to show the public all the differences up close and they don't have to bend over and look at something in the ground.

Sally Flatman: 00:02:28

Yeah, I had this vision actually of people who like galanthus. Basically on the wet grass.

Emma Thick: 00:02:33

You can generally tell a proper galanthophile by the fact that this time of their year their knees will be dirty because they've got down on their hands of knees to worship some tiny little Variation in white and green or yellow.

Sally Flatman: 00:02:45

Now, before we talk about them, I have to ask this question. How did you become interested in snowdrops?

Emma Thick: 00:02:54

Long story. I will try and shorten it. The woods where we grew up back in Dorset always had snowdrops.

So it was an annual tradition of go for a walk, amuse the kids, walk the dogs. So we did that for the snowdrops, we did that for the bluebells, the narcissus, the odd orchids that used to appear.

And it wasn't until I was at horticultural college when my mum turned up one evening with a snowdrop I couldn't identify which just sparked something in my head.

So, following day, went to the college library, got every bulb book available and was just scrolling through these, these various books going, this snowdrop is not in any of these books. That was frustrating. I found the plant finder. I found that there were snowdrop nurseries, I found there was a yellow one called Sandersi.

So I took the plant finder home to my mum and went, look, look, there's yellow snowdrops. We could buy a yellow one. We got a catalogue. The bulb was £20. We thought that was a fortune, so we went halves.

So our first, first snowdrop was Galanthus nivalis Sandersii Group.

ood few years until, I think,: 2000

That just blew my tiny mind and I have been addicted ever since. And it turns out the snowdrop my mum had been given was James Backhouse, and it grows everywhere in her garden like a weed. We love it.

Sally Flatman: 00:04:32

You must have a real eye for detail.

Emma Thick: 00:04:34

Yeah, I have a very bad eye for people's faces and names because my part of my brain, I think, is just focused on snowdrop recognition. People just fly out the head. The snowdrops I have to be able to identify within a good 90% sure most of the time, but there's so many and nobody knows them all.

Sally Flatman: 00:04:55

So you come to this garden.

Emma Thick: 00:04:56

Yep.

Sally Flatman: 00:04:57

Tell me that story. How do you get to be here?

Emma Thick: 00:05:00

So I came as the glass house supervisor and worked in the nursery for a year.

And then David and Margaret MacLennan from sort of Carlisle, they have one of the national collections, came for a visit and they said, we hear Emma's working here and Lord Hasseltine is like, oh, how do you know Emma? Earlier it was like, well, she collects snowdrops. So I was invited to walk around with them.

And we just started talking our own little Galanthophile language. And Lord Heseltine kind of looked at us and realized that I knew what I was talking about.

And so from: 2015

I just know the label says it's that thing, and I have to go with it because there is no current database of everything.

Sally Flatman: 00:05:59

And did Lord Heseltine just recognise your passion and then come to share it?

Emma Thick: 00:06:04

Yeah, he's a plant collector. He loves plants and he loves snowdrops, just in general, loves them.

So when he sort of found someone who could go, well, I can help you expand your collection if you let me. He took that on board and, yeah, I know I've done well. If I give him a plant catalog and I get everything I ask for in return, that's a good year.

Sally Flatman: 00:06:26

When you get a bulb, you have to really love and nurture that bulb, don't you?

Emma Thick: 00:06:33

Because it's so scary. They tend to be what we call in snowdrop world, Miffy.

Some things will grow for your friends, and you'll visit their garden and there'll be a clump of it and you'll covet it and you'll go home and you'll go, oh, it's £70. Okay, I'll buy one. You buy it and it dies. You buy another one. You try it somewhere else in the garden and it dies.

I try that three times and if I still can't grow it, I give up on it. There's one called Ronald McKenzie. It's a yellow gracilis type thing, and it's divine. But it is so Miffy. Friends down the road grow it like a weed.

I have to keep it in a pond basket on the nursery, and that's where it's happy and that's where it stays. I bring it out on display. When it's in flower, I put it back in its hole. That's where it's going to live.

Sally Flatman: 00:07:19

That is bizarre, because it's not like you come from a different part of the world or the country. It's literally down the road.

Emma Thick: 00:07:24

It's just down the road. And they grow it so well. This thing was found in Gloucestershire So it's not like it's evolved in a different climate.

It's just so frustrating that it just. And there's a number of things like that. We've got one called Lodestar. I've been here 10 years. We've still got two bulbs of.

e, which has been there since: 1986

And it's still a clump about 10 centimeters wide. They'd kind of lost track that it even existed, but it's happy and I've left it alone. So, yeah, there's. There's.

Sally Flatman: 00:08:05

I like that. Miffy.

Emma Thick: 00:08:06

Miffy. There's a peculiarity to snowdrops, which, again, you'll buy something and sometimes it will just vanish from the pot, like it never even existed.

And you. You go through it with a sieve and you're like, well, there must be something. And it just, there's not even a husk.

Sally Flatman: 00:08:20

It's like quietly disappeared in the night.

Emma Thick: 00:08:22

It's just vanished. Some sort of quantum universe, like where everyone's socks go. I think there's a place for the snowdrop bulbs that vanish.

They do have pests and diseases. They do have Botrytis and bulb fly and Stagnosporopsis, fungal things that'll eat them. But sometimes they do just disappear.

Sally Flatman: 00:08:40

Are there any that you know of that you are still searching for?

Emma Thick: 00:08:46

ch I'd been looking for since: 2001

Never seen it in the flesh. Where did you find it? I just mentioned it at my alpine garden group that I did a talk for. I was like, we should have had it.

It was given to us in a collection we got donated. I'd emptied the pots, it wasn't there and someone has given it to me. They went, oh, we've got loads of it. There you go.

I'm like, I've not seen this thing for 20, 20 plus years. How have you just got it? Anyway?

Sally Flatman: 00:09:23

Was it far away? Was that. Again, not that far.

Emma Thick: 00:09:25

It was further north. It was delivered to me on our last open day as, here's a gift for you. So I went away like a little happy goblin with my treasure. And yeah, I shall.

I shall admire it and love it until It's a big group and then I'll plant it out somewhere.

Sally Flatman: 00:09:40

So to someone who doesn't know very much about snowdrops, and we're looking at these. Is there a way of kind of explaining.

Emma Thick: 00:09:48

So you're gonna start looking at your Nivalis. So they're your naturalized, what you look like semi wild snowdrops. Snowdrops aren't native to this country.

There's a debate as to when they were introduced, whether it was as early as the Romans. It don't. Nobody thinks it's that.

Now, the first sort of mentions in sort of Gerard's Herbal of these things occurring, and I think they call them timely white bulbous violets, which is. I go, okay, fine. And so you start looking at your Nivalis and then you'll look at some of them and they're double.

So you'll turn them upside down and go, oh, these have got like loads of extra petals. And then you realises that if you do start to look at them closely, you will find even variations in your wild ones. Don't dig them up. Leave them be.

There's plenty of named ones to acquire. Don't dig them up from the wild. But it's just that little spark of. Actually, they're not just white and green flowers. Some of them have little faces.

There's one called Kencot Kali or Kencot number one. Sorry. There's a little face, got two little green eyes and a little mouth.

Sally Flatman: 00:10:49

Yes, yes, yes.

Emma Thick: 00:10:52

This one has green tips. This one is slightly yellowish, ovary, yellow marking.

So it's when you can see the variations in between them, you really start to think actually they're all different. And again, the size of some of these things, you know, on a native Ish, Nivalis will be sort of 20cm at most.

Sally Flatman: 00:11:13

So are these all nivalis?

Emma Thick: 00:11:14

These are all. These are. These are all hybrids. Right, mixtures.

The only Nivalis I think we've got is little egret down there and that has recurved little wiggly petals and it flies like a white egret.

Sally Flatman: 00:11:26

So that's a Nivalis, that's a Nivalis. And then this one here is an Elwesii. Now, what does that mean?

Emma Thick: 00:11:33

So you'll. If you go to your garden centre, you can find typically three species of snowdrop.

You'll have your Nivalis, your Elwesii and your Woronowii, which I don't have any on display, but they're the three that you'll see. They are commonly still imported from the wild. So they're dug up, packaged up, sent to Holland.

They then sell them to the garden centres and you take them home and love them.

Sally Flatman: 00:11:57

Where in the world?

Emma Thick: 00:11:59

So Elwesii is kind of Turkey. They're all originally from around the Caucasus and then they've sort of evolved a good few times from that location.

And the Woronowii is from sort of Ukraine and Russia and that sort of area. I mean, snowdrops stretch right from Europe through to the Lebanon into Russia down into Greece down to the islands around there.

So there's quite a big wide distribution of them.

Sally Flatman: 00:12:27

And they're being literally dug up there and still bought here. Or are they bred here?

Emma Thick: 00:12:32

No, well, the, the ones you buy in your garden center are still dug up in the wild. They have a license from CITES to be able to do that. If you dig them up from the wild, you're breaking the law.

So they're dug up with a license, shipped over. The ones you'll see here have all been bred or found or discovered in people's gardens or deliberately created by cross pollinating them.

And there are people who just leave it to the bees and there are people who do it deliberately saying, I want a yellow one. If I take two yellow ones, the majority of the seedlings might come true the first year or it might be a second generation.

So some of these things are sort of a good 10 years in, in the process to go. I want that. Let's make it happen.

Sally Flatman: 00:13:13

But there were three.

Emma Thick: 00:13:14

There's the three ones commonly find. Yeah. In your garden centers you'll commonly find.

Sally Flatman: 00:13:20

And then beyond that, though, beyond that.

Emma Thick: 00:13:22

There's about 23 species.

Sally Flatman: 00:13:24

Okay.

Emma Thick: 00:13:24

Again, ones you will occasionally come across is something called a Plicatus, which has a big broad leaf like Ken. Ken is a plicatus. I don't know anything about Ken other than he's called Ken, just Ken.

Sally Flatman: 00:13:38

You're looking great, Ken.

Emma Thick: 00:13:40

Ken's looking great. But Ken has these big pleated leaves with this fold at the back. So they're plicate, they're folded.

Sally Flatman: 00:13:48

Okay.

Emma Thick: 00:13:48

And you can see the difference. The Elwesii tend to be grey and a lot taller.

And there's a difference between the way their leaves emerge from the sheath that makes them different species.

Sally Flatman: 00:14:00

Have you bred them yourself?

Emma Thick: 00:14:03

We have come. I haven't done much deliberate breeding. I have played around a little bit, but none of my seedlings have flowered yet.

More often than not here we don't have time to deadhead. So what I do is I just go around and dig up all the seedlings, I find, because I can't guarantee that they have seeded. True.

And then we just put them in a bed somewhere and we see what comes up.

Sally Flatman: 00:14:24

So you're just basically watching to see naturally what just happened.

Emma Thick: 00:14:27

Just letting the bees do their thing, see what comes up.

nes have been there since the: 1980

Sally Flatman: 00:14:42

Oh, I was gonna say, how do you make that decision, Nameworthy?

Emma Thick: 00:14:45

It's. You tend to have to know enough about other people's snowdrops to know that what you've got is different. Which, because there is no overriding record at the moment, is very tricky.

Sally Flatman: 00:14:58

There's a gap in the market.

Emma Thick: 00:14:59

There's a gap in the market. I do intend to fill it in time.

Sally Flatman: 00:15:02

Excellent.

Emma Thick: 00:15:04

There's various forums on the Internet. There's a couple of big snowdrop groups on Facebook. There's a lot of interested people on Instagram.

And if you think you have something exciting, the easiest thing to do is show it to other people. And if they go, I want it, give it to me now. You know you've got something.

And there's a whole series of people who just give them silly names because it amuses them no end. I bought one in January at Middleton House at their snowdrop sale.

And I think the German name translates as Snot Yellow, which just amused me to have a plant called Snot yellow. There's curious things like Curse of the Were Rabbit, someone named it because it was weird and they'd watched the Wallace and Gromit film.

There's things that are slightly innuendoey. There's a lot of Uncle Dick and Fanny jokes going around sometimes. Big boy. And then some of them are named after people.

So William Bower was clearly named for someone's dad, son. I do not know. So, like, Lord Heseltine effectively has a snowdrop named after him, so he's one of the snowdrop immortals.

Sally Flatman: 00:16:19

So your name lives on as a plant, which is, I think, rather lovely.

Emma Thick: 00:16:22

Yes, it's very, very cool.

Sally Flatman: 00:16:25

Perhaps this is a good moment to find out a bit more about this garden from Lord Heseltine's son, Rupert. Does it have an important place in his childhood?

Rupert Heseltine: 00:16:34

we moved here as a family in: 1976

My dog and I spent hours and hours running or burrowing through fallen down trees and building camps because the place didn't look anything like it does today. It was full of sort of rotting trees, broken down branches. It had not been cared for or it was not designed as a garden.

When we first came here, you know, it was just sort of slightly dilapidated woodland. So as a child it was amazing. And then my father started developing it and the first thing we did was to develop the lake in front of the house.

I remember that very clearly.

So the bits near the house were developed earlier so I could still kind of run around like a wild thing in amongst the kind of fallen down rotting trees. And then as I got older and my, in a way my father became braver with what he was trying to achieve.

You know, huge areas were cleared and they were cleared, you know, in a fairly, well many people would think in a fairly brutal way. Literally with bulldozers and everything that shouldn't have been there, anything that was a rogue tree or was too spindly was removed. And I think today probably anything over 45ft was here when we arrived. So there are that, I suppose that maybe 10% of the trees still standing today were here when I was a child. I think people don't often realise that when they come here is what it looked like to start with.

And I think once you understand that what he's achieved is even greater.

Sally Flatman: 00:18:25

Where did his passion for gardening come from?

Rupert Heseltine: 00:18:28

As a small boy growing up in Wales, in Swansea, I think it started, started there. He does tell stories about growing a particular kind of plant and I'm afraid I can't remember what that was.

But he started as a small boy and so he's always had that passion and you know, as he became sort of maybe more successful and who was able to, to buy a forever home, he had a blank canvas so he could take that childhood passion and create an adult passion.

And I'm pleased to say even at his current age of 92, you know, he is working hard on his catalogue and planting and you know, he's very involved in the day to day running of the arboretum and you know, but you know, my role is not to be a gardener, it is, my role is to commercialize the garden.

Sally Flatman: 00:19:23

I just love the way that everything is labeled and you told me there's your father involved with that.

Rupert Heseltine: 00:19:31

Yeah, absolutely. So everything is labeled. So we have black, black labeled, white writing Are trees and shrubs, white labeled, black writing Galanthus.

of galanthus. We've got about: 1500

He has a machine and he can often be heard whirring away to this most deafening noise. But I think it's his happy place. I think he loves creating the labels and he must have, over the years, created thousands.

So, yeah, no, it's a remarkable achievement with everything else that is going on in life.

Sally Flatman: 00:20:11

Rupert organizes the open days at Thenford Arboretum and there are about 20. Check out the website. Throughout the year, between February and October, and they begin and end with snowdrops.

When does the earliest one bloom and the last one?

Emma Thick: 00:20:27

That depends on when your point of view is. Well, the first one flowers here in September, so it depends if you class that as the last one or the first one.

I always think that they stop flowering around March, April, and then they start up again in the autumn.

So I think our first flowering one is September, and that's a peshmenii, so that's a little Turkish guy, very sort of stripy, thin leaves flowers without any leaf showing. So it's just. Just a flower stalk. Not entirely hardy. We've got it growing right on the rill in the rock garden, effectively.

And then the reginae-olgae take over and. And then the early flowering Elwesii and then the early flowering plicatus.

And then the main season kicks off around January, February, odd thing, into March, and then the very outliers in April.

Sally Flatman: 00:21:20

So how. How do snowdrops actually spread?

Emma Thick: 00:21:24

So the bee comes along, does the pollination.

They're a good sort of thermometer because honeybees don't fly unless it's warmer than 10 degrees, and snowdrop flowers don't open unless it's warmer than 10 degrees. So homemade thermometer outside your bedroom window or whatever, you can go, it's warm enough for a T shirt, or maybe, I don't know if you're feeling brave.

So the seed pods will form and the snowdrop will gradually, as the pod weighs down the flower, it sort of spreads it out the length of the flowering scape and that pod will hit the ground and it will either sort of lay there waiting for something to split it open or it'll get nibbled by a slug and the seed will spill out. Awesome. Ants will come along and find it and there's a little tiny sort of tail on the seed, which is like a protein that the ants love.

So the ant will come along, find the seed and go, oh my God, what a tasty snack. Takes him back under the ground just where the seed wants to be. The seed is happy. As Larry, the little protein tail gets eaten off. The ant is happy.

The seed is under the ground. And then following spring or two, three years later, they don't always germinate the first time.

Their little seed will send up one tiny little grass like leaf and then it'll send down a little tiny root with what will become the bulb. And that's how they spread with ants in the wild.

They'll tend to come up to the surface and be moved around, probably by pigs in Europe and the wilder places. Moles do a really good job of moving them around. Really annoying if you've got a collection and the mole has moved something.

Some of them just seem to walk themselves. We've got one called Wendy's Gold, and I'm pretty sure that just has got tiny little legs and it just moves where it wants to be.

And you're like, well, you're happy there. I know you're there. Fine.

Sally Flatman: 00:23:15

So if somebody wants to increase their collection, this is the advice moment for how to grow. What should they do? I've talked, I've heard about buying the green, buying in the green.

Emma Thick: 00:23:25

So buying in the green was the traditional way of doing it because people thought snowdrops didn't like drying out. The trouble was the early days of them being imported from Turkey, they were drying out too much.

So they were drying them out in the wild in Turkey too much, packaging them up in Holland. Then they were sitting on your supermarket shelves or your garden center shelves just in little, little packets, and they were dry and crispy.

People planted them, they died. So what they've learned is they've taught the people who are harvesting them in the wild not to dry them out so much.

So when they get to the people who import them, they're nice and plump, they tend to grow a lot better. And so that has sparked its own dormant bulb season. So in August, people send out the list.

You buy them as a dry bulb, get them from a reputable buyer, because it would be so easy to send you the wrong thing. And you spent a lot of money and you just get a bulb, six months later, it flowers and it's like, well, that's not what I paid for in the green.

You basically lift them as they're flowering or just after they're flowering. The trouble is, if you break off those roots, they don't grow new ones. They're not like a herbaceous plant.

If you snap a root, it branches, it forks out. They have one set. If you break them, that's it for the season, no more roots.

So if you're lifting and dividing in the green, get them with as much root as you can, lift them, plant them the same day, don't sort of stick them in a bucket and forget about them. They will sulk because they need those roots.

If you're lifting them in the green to put all that energy back into the bulb so you get a nice fat bulb for the summer.

Sally Flatman: 00:24:57

And if you have bought them in the green y again, you've got to be really super careful with those roots.

Emma Thick: 00:25:01

Yep, absolutely. They are fragile. They are. They are springy. So, yeah, you don't break them off if you can avoid it.

Most nurseries, snowdrop sales, they'll all be in pots. You just buy it in a nice pop pot, it in the ground. Happy days.

Sally Flatman: 00:25:17

And then basically, if. So if you were to buy some now, you buy them in a pot, you find them in a garden center, you pop them in.

Any tips for ensuring they're going to be happy?

Emma Thick: 00:25:26

Get them out of the garden center soil as fast as possible. They tend to be in very cheap and nasty. It's probably still peat free, but it's not good for them.

They tend to be sat way too moist, so get as much of that soil off very carefully. You could probably wash it off and then pull them apart ever so slightly if they're tight together.

If they're just loosely in a pot, just find a spot. They are traditionally a woodland plant, so they want shade in the summer.

And we have discovered that the perfect combination, bizarrely, is snowdrops and hydrangeas. The hydrangeas suck all the moisture out in the summer, which. Which provides the snowdrop with the nice dry ground conditions it wants.

The nivalis will cope with wetter conditions. The more greyer leaved things, the Elwesii, they're from Turkey, they like it dry. So plant them fairly shallow, fairly hot and they'll be happier.

Sally Flatman: 00:26:19

So it's still right plant, right place?

Emma Thick: 00:26:21

Yep, Always.

Sally Flatman: 00:26:22

Always.

Emma Thick: 00:26:23

In some snowdrops cases, there is never a right space and it will just continue to die on you because it's. Miffy. Miffy.

Sally Flatman: 00:26:31

Just tell me about your hat.

Emma Thick: 00:26:33

, knitted the first one early: 2000

So I've got quite a lot of hats now just in a drawer. So Mum knits me a new one every year. She's used rainbow wool. It's very warm. And then she embroiders little snowdrops on the outside. That varies.

For a good while before my name was sort of properly recognised, I was just the snowdrop hat lady. And then my mum was snowdrop hat lady's mum. And there are various people who've commissioned my mum to knit them their own hat.

So occasionally I'll go to an event and there'll just be a whole gaggle of people wearing slow drop hats.

Sally Flatman: 00:27:22

I love that your mum shares your passion.

Emma Thick: 00:27:24

Yeah, absolutely. Her own garden collection is sort of 200 something.

Sally Flatman: 00:27:31

And you talk snowdrops.

Emma Thick: 00:27:32

Yeah, yeah. We, we often go to events together. We. We tend to spend our own money on our. And 60 pound a bulb is. Is nothing we save up.

And that's our, that's our passion. We'll just go, yeah.

Sally Flatman: 00:27:45

You don't go 50/50 now?

Emma Thick: 00:27:46

No, no. Unless it's really something we want. We tend to go, well, I'll buy that one in a couple of years. I'll split it. You can have that bit.

I can have that bit. And our collections will improve.

Sally Flatman: 00:27:55

What's the most expensive one you've ever bought?

Emma Thick: 00:27:59

It probably was Ronald McKenzie at £70. I don't think I've spent more than that recently. I can't remember doing it. Probably did no more than 150 because you have.

Sally Flatman: 00:28:09

They can go higher.

Emma Thick: 00:28:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we're talking thousands on ebay. There have been some incredible things sort of break records because it was the first of its kind.

on ebay and it made, I think,: 1300

There was a sort of almost an online competition to have a reginae-olgae named after someone. If you bought the plant, that went up into the thousands.

Joe Sharman of Monksilver's plants regularly break records and it ends up in all the papers. But you have to understand he has taken years to create that thing. It's not something he's found. He said, I want a double poculiform snow drop.

And he has taken almost 20 years to get it to the point where he has enough to sell. So you can't begrudge him selling these things for sort of three or four hundred pounds on his store.

Sally Flatman: 00:29:09

No.

Emma Thick: 00:29:10

And if it's a good snowdrop, the price will drop dramatically very quickly because everyone will be then giving them away and swapping them for other things.

Sally Flatman: 00:29:18

That's the wonderful thing about gardeners, isn't it?

Emma Thick: 00:29:20

Snowdrop people tend to be very generous. If they can't give it to you, you just get put on a waiting list and as soon as you're able to, you do send things out to people.

Sally Flatman: 00:29:30

So a lovely community then.

Emma Thick: 00:29:32

Yeah, it's a whole community and a lot of us are just in it because it gets us out of the house in these grey, God awful cold February days. I think a lot of Galanthophiles suffer with sad, sad syndrome.

So any excuse to go and see other people and chat and get out of your house is a great sort of morale boost. And they're just lovely. I think everyone loves snowdrops. Everyone's got space for something.

You know, there's just little Ben up there in a tiny little pot on the top shelf. He's very small, very petite. He would fit in anyone's garden. You know, even if you have a window box, you could have a snowdrop growing in it.

They will grow pretty much everywhere with the right care so that you just let them dry out in the summer and off they go again when they get wet.

Sally Flatman: 00:30:21

I travelled on from Thenford to the Lake District and I have just spent the weekend on my knees looking at snowdrops and looking in a whole new way because of Emma's passion and knowledge for this tiny flower. I hope it may have the same effect on you. Our Plant Stories is an independent podcast presented and produced by me, Sally Flatman.

And please do rate and review it. It helps spread a podcast because the ants don't do that. They're too busy spreading snowdrops.