Each October, volunteers in the market town of Shepton Mallet in Somerset plant thousands of snowdrop bulbs on roadsides, roundabouts, in schools and in other public places. In February, the opening of those flowers coincides with the Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival, which takes over the market town.
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The festival draws an international crowd of snowdrop devotees and many dress up for the occasion. Chalkboard signs, beautifully illustrated with snowdrops, draw visitors through the streets and direct them to the various venues that host the event. Garden designer Dan Pearson is patron, and there are snowdrop-related tours, talks, activities and competitions, as well as open gardens, including nearby Yeo Valley Organic Garden, featuring swathes of white flowers. In the hall of a local junior school, an assembly of specialist snowdrop nurseries offer a wealth of plants for sale, growing in pots and in the green.
Alongside well-established favourites are bunches of, as yet, unnamed snowdrops, appealingly wrapped in brown paper, for those gardeners willing to take a chance on finding the next big (small) thing. On the high street, every shop front, from the café serving organic food to the hair salon and hardware shop, has a glorious, snowdrop-themed window display.
More on snowdrops
Shepton Mallet is a former cloth- and wool-milling town that, until recently, was most famed as the site of England’s oldest prison. After going AWOL from National Service, the notorious gangsters the Kray twins were briefly held there, and it was a place of safety for the Domesday Book during the Second World War. It now has a new reason to be known – as the place to go in February for all things snowdrop.
“Whether you’re a galanthophile, a gardener or someone who appreciates art, poetry and beautiful things, there’s something for everyone,” says Amanda Hirst, one of the festival’s three directors. “It’s also a great base for visiting our festival partner gardens and other notable snowdrop gardens in Somerset.”
Breeder extraordinaire
The festival, now in its fifth year, celebrates the legacy of James Allen (1830-1906), a local man who came to be known as the ‘Snowdrop King’. An amateur horticulturist, Allen was born in Windsor Hill, on the outskirts of the town, and lived and worked in Shepton Mallet throughout his life. He is one of Britain’s most recognised snowdrop breeders, and was likely the first person to breed snowdrops from wild species, by deliberately crossing and raising new hybrids. He was so famous in his day that in 1891 the Kew botanist George Baker named the hybrid Galanthus x allenii (Galanthus alpinus x Galanthus woronowii) in his honour.
“James Allen’s legacy was extraordinary and his title of Snowdrop King very well deserved,” explains festival co-director Dominic Weston. “It’s thought there were hundreds of new snowdrops around at the time he and other Victorian collectors were actively seeking out and breeding new forms. James Allen is credited with breeding many, including at least 29 surviving named cultivars, and it’s for this reason that we celebrate his legacy each year.”
Snowdrop breeding is studied work that involves observing and identifying the most interesting characteristics of the genus, selecting flowers that demonstrate such traits, and crossing the flowers repeatedly before growing on from seed to bulb to flowering size, to see what blooms each February, looking out for anything new and of note. In The Garden magazine in 1886, Allen wrote: ‘I find that in nivalis, plicatus, imperati and elwesii there are many forms, so I am currently purchasing from fresh sources and then making selections for them when they bloom. I am raising seedlings from my best varieties.’
to browse the selections, some of which are still unnamed.
Test of time
Notable among Allen’s selections are two cultivars still very popular today. Galanthus ‘Magnet’ has well-formed flowers that are subtly marked in green and have an unusually long pedicel so that the flowerhead bobs in the breeze. Galanthus x hybridus ‘Merlin’ is a clear white flower with inner flower segments that are completely green.
With the exception of Galanthus ‘Magnet’ and Galanthus x hybridus ‘Merlin’, many of Allen’s seedlings
and hybrids have long since disappeared. His legacy, however, is evident in every gardener
who ventures out during the short, dark days of winter to enjoy the subtle detail of these
tiny treasures, and in the celebratory spirit of the Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival.
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Two of James Allen’s enduring snowdrop cultivars on display in Shepton Mallet Baptist Church. Galanthus ‘Magnet’ (left) is characterised by long, arching pedicels. The robust Galanthus x hybridus ‘Merlin’ (right) has unbroken, solid-green inner segments.
her poem Dandelions.
A range of artisan crafts are on display to admire and buy in the church of St Peter and St Paul.
Willow weaving is one of the local crafts on offer in bookable activity sessions. This mossy hanging snowdrop display is inspired by the Japanese kokedama tradition, the art of growing plants in moss-covered balls of soil.
Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival runs from 12-18 February 2024. Festival HQ is the Shepton Library. Web sheptonsnowdrops.org.uk