GARDENING
Snowdrops and hellebores of every shade and shape herald the turn of the season in a Cambridgeshire cottage garden
Peep over the garden gate at Clover Cottage in West Wickham, Cambridgeshire, in February and you will be stopped in your tracks. Thousands of hellebores and snowdrops glisten in the low sunlight like jewels, hugging the invitingly winding path to the front door of this 17th-century thatched cottage. The dazzling early spring display is the work of Shirley Shadford and her husband Paul, who have lived here for 20 years. “I always wanted a cottage garden and when our daughters left home and we moved here, I had the chance to create one,” Shirley says.
Spring is the highlight and the couple are pleased to welcome visitors on three February and early March open days to share the spectacle. “It’s just for a few hours, but when you’ve been cooped up over winter, it’s very heartening to see such fresh colour,” Shirley says. There are plenty of seats where visitors can pause to enjoy it over tea and cake and Shirley always has a selection of plants potted up to sell.
Apart from a few trees, there was just grass and gravel when they moved here. They started by putting down paving slabs round the cottage and did away with boring straight paths, replacing them with more characterful curved ones. Shirley traced out new borders using a hosepipe and she has now invested in steel edging for these – Paul had begun to point out that “the grass has shrunk again” because she was always nibbling away at the edge to squeeze in more plants.
Shirley started with just 20 pots of snowdrops, planted “in the green”, then split them up and moved them every two or three years so that they have gradually spread to fill the beds. She does this just after flowering and doesn’t recommend ever buying snowdrops as dry bulbs as they are much harder to establish.
The secret to having a great hellebore display, Shirley believes, is to include plenty of different colours. She started with half a dozen and has built up her collection from there. “I have some lovely doubles: dark red-maroon ones, pretty pinks, whites and then some yellows with a red eye. I don’t worry about the names of the varieties – I never make a mental note of them. I choose them for their flowers, simple as that.” Hellebores are promiscuous and after they have cross-bred, they have a tendency to revert to a rather dull pink. At this stage,
