The Snowdrops at Elworthy Cottage

I just had to see the snowdrops at Elworthy Cottage. I’d intended to go before but somehow had always ended up visiting the bigger places. These had huge carpets of ‘ordinary’ snowdrops in February.

A West Country Gem

Elworthy Cottage has ordinary ones but also 350-400 named selections.

It’s a small garden on the Brendon Hills at the foot of Exmoor.

It’s owned by plant enthusiasts Mike and Jenny Spiller.

We easily found their well marked garden – we had chosen to visit on one of the days that they open for the National Garden Scheme.

After dressing for the showery weather, we were met at the entrance by the owners. Sensibly they warned us to be careful where we trod since paths had become wet and slippery due to the recent snow.  After a brief discussion about their caged, but normally free ranging beautiful hens, we proceeded gingerly into the garden.

The garden consists of many island beds filled with a few mature shrubs and trees.

These are heavily under-planted with hardy perennials and snowdrops. And there were snowdrops everywhere!

What distinguishes the snowdrops at Elworthy Cottage from so many other snowdrop collections is that most are discretely labelled.

 

 

 

Named Distinctive Varieties

I’m no great Galanthophile but this is clearly a mecca for such snowdrop enthusiasts.

I noticed several familiar varieties, some of which I grow.

But mostly I was intrigued by the subtle differences that exist from one snowdrop to another when studied closely.

Sadly, this was not a day to linger and hard cold rain shortened our visit.

 

 

Low light and wind

The weather made photography difficult with the delicate looking snowdrop bells always on the move. Thick cloud cover made for extremely poor light but I grabbed a few images to share with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visits in February 2025

I must be jinxed visiting this garden as I visited twice in February 2025 and each time the weather was bad!

On the first occasion I was showing fellow blogger and garden writer Marianne Wilburn snowdrops in Somerset gardens. She was a guest of ours from Virginia in USA but also a fellow member of the Garden Media Guild here in the UK.

With Marianne we encountered cold rain as we headed to the hills. But on reaching around 600ft up where the north facing garden is located that had turned to snow!

Undeterred we explored this compact garden.

Mike Spiller gave us and a group of keen gardeners visiting from Switzerland an overview of the garden and the 49 years that he and Jenny had been there.

On the second occasion we had better luck with the weather [no snow!].

However, hard and very cold rain drove us back to our cars before we could really study this huge snowdrop collection. Nevertheless we did appreciate that a later visit in the late spring and summer would be well worthwhile since this is far from a one shot pony garden! Masses of interesting and superior perennial plants follow on from the early flowering bulbs and make this a gem of a West Country garden.

 

I’ve written here on my visit to Chelsea Physic Garden when they had a snowdrop festival

I’ve also visited The Garden House near Plymouth which I has a big snowdrop collection and is now open in winter.

One of the other gardens that I took Marianne Wilburn to see snowdrops in abundance was the famous garden at East Lambrook once owned by plantswoman Margery Fish. Read about a previous visit I made to this garden here.

 

Don’t miss another blog!

Scroll down to the bottom of this page and sign up to be alerted when I publish my next blog!