CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS

To access our current snowdrop catalogue when its available, click here.

One of the many benefits of buying snowdrops as plants rather than as bulbs is that WE grow the bulbs on to plants and assume the risks of the bulb being the wrong cultivar, suffering from disease, and/or under-performing by producing plants too small to sell.   When you buy a dried or dormant bulb, you will not know if any of these issues will be a problem.  If you buy a growing plant from us,  you will know that it is the right cultivar, disease-free, and blooming-size.  If any of these problem conditions exist, we will not sell the plant to you.

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When we purchased dormant bulbs, we received ‘Sprite’ (lovely in its own right) when we were expecting ‘Spindlestone Surprise’.

The downside for us is that we have to cancel a few snowdrops that we intended to offer when we see them emerging in late fall or cancel orders for plants in February around shipping time.  Although this is inconvenient and growing plants instead of selling the bulbs is much more time-consuming for us, we think it is worth it in order to make the highest quality snowdrops available to our customers.  We would rather have a snowdrop underperform in our garden than yours!

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These ‘Walker Canada’ bulbs purchased in the fall proved to be diseased when we dug them the following February to sell.  Note that the leaves of these plants look perfectly normal so that, if they were planted as dormant bulbs directly in your garden, you would not know they were diseased.  Meanwhile they would be spreading disease through out your snowdrop collection.  That is why we recommend that you never plant dried or dormant snowdrop bulbs directly in your garden.

Three cultivars profiled in our new offering posts, click here and here to read, are now obviously too small to sell in the 2026 catalogue.  They are ‘Early Bird’, ‘Poculi Perfect, and ‘Selina Cords’, all snowdrops from species with smaller bulbs that may have been adversely affected by the drought.  This post is part three of a three-part series on our new snowdrop offerings and will profile ‘B and B Duncan’, ‘Clare Blakeway-Phillips’, and ‘Frank Lebsa’, all being offered by us for the first time.

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‘Early Bird’ is very healthy but too small to sell this year.

The 2026 Snowdrop Catalogue will be posted on our website on December 6, 2025, at 11 am EST, and details will be sent to our snowdrop customer email list at that time.  Meanwhile, this post will give everyone an advance look (sorry, no advance orders) at three more special, new snowdrops that will be available for order on December 6.  Enjoy!

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.

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The flowers of ‘B and B Duncan’ have an elegant shape.

‘B and B Duncan’ is a late-blooming cultivar of the giant snowdrop, G. elwesii. It has large, rounded outer segments held out like spoons on the long claws, which join the outers to the ovary. There are faint basal marks on the inners, looking like eyes.  It is late blooming and grows prolifically.  It is especially prized for its beautiful scent.

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‘B and B Duncan’ has a very upright habit.

‘B and B Duncan’ was originally discovered by well known Irish garden designer and lecturer Helen Dillon.  She passed it to Altamont Gardens in County Carlow, Ireland, where it was evaluated for over 25 years.  Robert Miller, Altamont’s owner,  named it for Brian Duncan, an RHS and American Daffodil Society award-winning daffodil breeder, and his wife Betty.  It was introduced at the 2024 Annual Irish Snowdrop Gala.

. ‘Clare Blakeway-Phillips’ has an almost solid green inner mark.

‘Clare Blakeway-Phillips’ is a floriferous G. plicatus hybrid.  It has large, rounded outer segments and an almost fully green inner mark.  The shiny, bright lime-green ovary (the cap above the bloom) makes the flower very distinct.  Its widely splayed, very glaucous leaves perfectly display this vigorous snowdrop.

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‘Clare Blakeway-Phillips’ was collected from the Herfordshire garden of Angela Marchant in the early 1970s by snowdrop enthusiast Reverend Richard Blakeway-Phillips.  He named it after his daughter, and it received an RHS Award of Merit in 1976.  Our stock, as verified by beloved snowdrop expert Alan Street, originated from the garden of Veronica Cross not far from her well known “island”

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‘Frank Lebsa’ is just beautiful.

‘Frank Lebsa’ is a cultivar of G. elwesii var. monostictus.  It could be the earliest blooming member of the Hiemalis Group in my garden, starting to bloom in October right after G. reginae-olgae.  It has gorgeous markings with a dark green inner mark covering more than half the segment and a bold, lighter green patch on the outer segments.  It really stands out in the fall when most snowdrops are just white, beautiful as they may be!

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‘Frank Lebsa’ is very noticeable in the fall garden.

‘Frank Lebsa’ was discovered in 1999 by Elisabeth Lebsa in a pot of giant snowdrops at the Dresden flower market.  It was named by her son, snowdrop expert Jörg Lebsa, for his brother.  Anne Repnow profiles it on page 40 of Some Snowdrops.

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Carolyn

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