Top snowdrops for your garden

By Daisy Bowie-Sell

Published: Wednesday, 26 January 2022 at 12:00 am

The garden of John Sales, former chief gardens adviser for the National Trust, is a snowdrop-lover’s dream, although he likes it to look good all year. His shady woodland with irises in the grass, his special meadows studded with orchids, his borders, his slim box hedges, well-grown veg and unusual plants are all managed with the same high spirits and humour that earned him so many fans in his NT days.

John thinks the reason many snowdrops get diseased, is partly because in borders they share a rich diet with other plants, which they hate. He also thinks that old narcissi cultivars, such as the early Backhouse cultivars ‘Empress’ and ‘Emperor’, which are often grown with snowdrops in spring displays, were carriers of viruses. Congested clumps are less likely when bulbs are grown naturally and he rarely divides his snowdrops unless they are in very tight clumps. “Putting them in grass stops disease,” he says firmly.

Here are John Sales’s favourite snowdrops for naturalising.