Garden TOUR
With a snowdrop collection to rival the great estates, there are quirky features at every turn in this small, fun garden
With more than 350 varieties of snowdrops, Gill Hadland admits that once she started collecting them, it was a slippery slope. Although her Great Glen garden, near Leicester, is well-known for its carpets of luminous white galanthus, there is so much more to fascinate and beguile. Along every curve of the meandering gravel pathway there’s another unusual plant or interesting feature to grab your attention.
Gill and husband John have worked tirelessly on the small, organically-managed plot since moving there in 1986. Explaining how her garden evolved, she says: “Most of the garden was a rectangle of lawn with a concrete path down the middle. This was removed and replaced with stepping stones. With four children – three of them boys – the area remained a football pitch for them.
“While the children were small, we tidied the garden, including taming the hedges, laurel at the front and the large beech hedge at the rear. The hedges remain under control to this day!”
Arickety wooden fence on the south boundary was replaced with a garden wall built using recycled bricks, and John, an engineer, created Victorian-style cappings out of moulds he made himself. The garden tapers towards the east end, where the couple removed hybrid tea roses that weren’t to their taste and replaced them with a vegetable plot.
In raised beds, there is asparagus, rhubarb, raspberries, garlic and the more exotic yacon – a sweet and crunchy South American root vegetable, not unlike dahlia tubers. “They are my husband’s obsession but they’re very good – great in stir fries.”
Asmall, but beautiful, octagonal greenhouse, which was a 50th birthday present, is home to tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper and sometimes chillies. In the winter it is used for frost-free storage of tender plants. Brick paths run around the four raised beds, and a pattern for garden-themed gifts begins to emerge when Gill explains that they are made from steel that rusts to good effect and were a 70th birthday present. “The beds make life easier for me because I’m not getting any younger! They’re just the right size for
