The species snowdrop Galanthus reginae-olgae blooming in our garden in October with ‘Shell Pink’ lamium.
Our current snowdrop catalogue is on line here.
Around this time every year, I start to get emails from customers and blog readers asking which early-blooming snowdrops will be available for purchase in our catalogue. When you see the photo above, you can understand why gardeners who appreciate snowdrops are trying to extend their season into early fall. Early snowdrops are beautiful in their own right but especially appreciated when not surrounded by the many other snowdrop cultivars that flower in the heart of the snowdrop season. And this beautiful clump of fresh white flowers is in full bloom when everything around it is going by for the year.
Highlighted in this post are five, early-blooming snowdrops that will be available in the 2020 catalogue. Keep in mind that exact bloom time is affected by how quickly the soil cools off in the fall and the amount of moisture available to the bulbs—warmer and drier falls seem to equate with later-blooming.
Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US. For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.
Galanthus reginae-olgae looks a lot like the common snowdrop, G. nivalis, but it blooms reliably by mid-October in our garden, and it has a more rigidly upright habit.
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G. reginae-olgae also lasts a long time—here it is looking a little worse for wear on December 3.
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The G. reginae-olgae that we sell comes from bulb expert Charles Cresson who selected it as a form that thrives in our climate as opposed to the other forms of this species he has trialed. I too have tried G. reginae-olgae from other sources without success.
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Galanthus elwesii ‘Potter’s Prelude’ begins to bloom in mid-November in our garden and can often last into January. It is a rare American snowdrop selected in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s.
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‘Potter’s Prelude’s’ flowers are big and beautiful.
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‘Potter’s Prelude’ is a great companion plant for fall-blooming camellias—here with the petals of ‘Winter’s Joy’.
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‘Potter’s Prelude’ has beautiful foliage. The leaves of early-blooming snowdrops come out with or immediately after the flowers, which means that, if we have a hard winter, they can look somewhat battered when it is snowdrop shipping time in late February or early March.
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Galanthus elwesii ‘Barnes’ is a November-blooming snowdrop so highly regarded in England that it has earned the coveted Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society, one of only 28 snowdrops to do so.
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‘Barnes’ in our garden
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‘Barnes’ also remains ornamental for a long period of time. It still looks great here at the very end of December.
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Galanthus elwesii ‘Standing Tall’ is a very large and beautiful December-blooming snowdrop selected by bulb expert Charles Cresson in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, after many years of evaluation.
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The big flowers have beautiful dark green markings.
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It is a bold plant that can hold its own among evergreen groundcovers like the Chinese wild ginger in the photo.
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Galanthus elwesii ‘Xmas’, a December-blooming snowdrop, originated at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, DC. I introduced it and named it ‘Xmas’ because it blooms around Christmas and has a distinct X on its inner segments.
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‘Xmas’ is quite vigorous in my mid-Atlantic garden.
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Each plant quickly produces two or three flowers.
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‘Xmas’ is gorgeous on a sunny December day.
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When you look through our catalogue in December, think about adding some of these beautiful, early snowdrops.
Carolyn
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