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1000 Snowdrops

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The garden of a thousand snowdrops begins with the planting of the first bulb.

I came up with that particular line of Zen after spending a week planting snowdrop bulbs – over a thousand of them. Each one individually planted in it’s own individual hole bored with the handle-end of a wooden spoon. I’m not really sure if I could face doing that again, it was a very long and tiring week.

There are two states you can plant snowdrops in – the first is planting the snowdrop bulbs in Autumn but another way is to plant snowdrops “in the green”, that is snowdrops that have been lifted from the soil in spring (after they have flowered) and have green leaves – so planting them as plants.

I’m aware of the whole planting bulbs v.s. planting in the green arguments for snowdrops but in the end decided to go for bulbs as they seem to be cheaper – unit for unit – than plants in the green. As it took me a week to get all the bulbs in, bulbs that were waiting to be planted were kept in water half the time and drained for the other half. I figured this would keep the bulbs from drying out without risking them rotting, especially if the very last bulbs to go in were waiting around for a week.

I’m very glad this particular Autumn job is done now and I hope to enjoy the show in late winter. I don’t know how many out of the thousand will survive, grow and flower but it had better be a lot of them. Meanwhile, I’ll be keeping the soil where the bulbs were planted (most of the borders) moist to stop the bulbs from drying out.

There will definitely be pictures for the spring, but I won’t be counting.

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Sunil Patel

I'm Sunil Patel, this is me. I created the Garden at 13 Broom Acres and I open it to visitors. I also bake and write blog posts giving a "behind the scenes" look into what it's like to maintain such a garden.

Visit the blog, then come and visit the garden. We can have a good sit-down, a jolly chinwag and a relaxing cup of tea with a sinfully generous slice of home made cake.

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3 comments

Garden Blogs of the Month: July 2012 « Jean's Garden 25/07/2012 - 3:41 am

[…] blog’s subtitle as “a tiny plot crammed with flowers.” The very first post, about planting 1000 snowdrops, gives some sense of just how crammed!  Sunil is an IT professional when he’s not in the garden, […]

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leigh 30/07/2015 - 3:07 pm

where did you buy these snowdrops as they seem quite cheap and you get the free 50 double ones!

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Sunil 30/07/2015 - 9:49 pm

These bulbs came from Eurobulbs in the UK. They are based in East Anglia and have an online website and paper catalogue. They are pretty cheap as they specialise in spring bulbs.

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