Last February I was allowed to choose a collection of galanthus from another garden. I went for varieties I could recognise from a few paces away – I don’t see the point in obsessing about a detail you need to be on your hands and knees to observe. I’ve enjoyed their reappearance in the stock beds, partly because they’re different from the common forms we have already, but also because at least half have flowered a month earlier than my natives. ‘Mrs McNamara’ was already with us at Christmas, and since then I’ve picked a posy for the house that has gathered in complexity with witchhazels and Algerian iris and early willow catkins braving the cold.
The first bright days in February saw the Crocus tommassinianus spring open on the banks behind the house. I grew this beautiful species under a Cercis tree in London, but their pale flowers would fail to open on all but the brightest of days. It would make me feel a little sad that they had made all that effort and never got to see the sun, but here on the sunny bank they are a different thing altogether. Spearing the grass to muscle their way into the light, they are all but invisible until that first bright day of readiness. When they open, suddenly and with absolute joy, they fling their petals as if they were stretching in the morning.
C tommassinianus is one of the few crocus to naturalise readily in this country. I prefer the straight species with its lilac outer petals and silvery-mauve interior to the named forms that are darker and sit less lightly in the turf. ‘Ruby Giant’ is violet-mauve and ‘Whitewell Purple’ has a mauve exterior and paler interior. Both are nicer by far than the blowsier Dutch varieties that you see more often.
I have a couple of pans of the C tommassinianus ‘Albus’ that I am keeping separate from their mauve cousins to curb any promiscuous behaviour. They are pure and elegant and make the larger white varieties look voluminous and vulnerable, like brides and bridesmaids caught in a storm. Though the white form doesn’t have that delightful contrast between dark outer petal and silvery inside, their saffron anthers inject a shot of colour.
For more intensive colour after a winter’s grey, the C chrysanthus varieties are a delight. Christopher Lloyd planted a wonderful selection. He delighted in the way they spangled the turf, like sweets cast on the ground or myriad butterflies. The best selections have a marked contrast between the interior and the exterior so that when closed they register very differently from when they are triggered open in sun.
C chrysanthus ‘Gypsy Girl’ is gold with quite a contrast in the liquorice stripes to the reverse. ‘Blue Pearl’ is silvery blue with lavender outer petals, while ‘Cream Beauty’ is cream both inside and out – but it does have gold in the throat as compensation, and just being there to herald the spring is enough.
Get growing
In some gardens birds can tear flowers to tatters. String cotton in a modest network between sticks at about a foot above the ground and you will keep the birds at bay.
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