On a dry but overcast day in early February, 51 Friends and Guests made the journey north to visit Thenford Arboretum and Gardens to view the snowdrops.
The history
Lord and Lady Heseltine purchased the house in 1976, and over the last 50 years they have restored woodland and created their garden. Advice was sought from leading horticulturalists including Lanning Roper, Sir Harold Hiller and Roy Lancaster in order to replant the garden. The Arboretum is now more than 70 acres with at least 3000 different trees and shrubs, including many Champion Trees.
Areas within the garden include a walled garden, medieval fish ponds, a rill, rose garden and sculpture garden alongside many herbaceous borders.
For the first 10-15 years Thenford’s snowdrops were mainly Galanthus nivalis which were divided and spread around. In the nineties Henry and Carolyn Elwes of Colesbourne Park encouraged the broadening of the snowdrop collection. Since May 2014 Deputy Head Gardener and Galanthophile Emma Thick has expanded the planting and in 2024 there were 900 species and cultivars being grown at Thenford.
By the time we visited in 2025 the number has been increased to 1500 species and cultivars although as Emma explained some of the cultivars are very similar. They have now been registered as a National Collection.
Galanthus ‘Lady Fairhaven’
Galanthus ‘Lady Fairhaven’
Snowdrops
After tea, coffee and cake and a very brief talk we set off with a map into the garden.
One of the first snowdrops we encountered on the path to the gardens was named after Lady Fairhaven, giving an unexpected link with Englefield Green. Lady Fairhaven lived at Park Close (now known as Windsor Court), just along Wick Lane from The Savill Garden. Following the death of her husband in 1929, she and her sons bought the historic Runnymede Meadow and gifted it to the National Trust in his memory.
Snowdrops in the Arboretum
Walking further into the garden we discovered many snowdrops in the arboretum growing in clusters around the base of specimen trees.
Meeting Emma tending the snowdrops, she was asked about when to divide the snowdrops. She explained that due to the large number of snowdrops dividing at Thenford starts as soon as the snowdrop flowers die back. Those around the trees once divided are planted out in groups of 5 plants, spreading out to groups of 3 plants with single plants on the edge to provide a more natural look.
Moving on in the garden snowdrop cultivars are planted at the base of hydrangeas. The shrubs take in water in the summer providing the snowdrops with the dormancy period they need.
Snowdrops and Ophiopogon planiscapus in an urn
The Gardens
In the topiary garden there was a collection of Italian urns containing black grass, Ophiopogon planiscapus and snowdrops – a striking combination.
A theatre of snowdrops and daffodils
In the walled garden we came across a plant theatre containing terracotta pots of snowdrops and daffodils. Here it was easy to see the different markings on the snowdrops and some of the many different shapes and sizes that snowdrops exhibit. Some snowdrops are scented.
A bronze sculpture of Lenin
As we walked around in the sculpture garden, we turned a corner and found an enormous head of Vladimir Lenin (1870 -1924), the Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist who founded the Russian Communist Party and became the first head of government of Soviet Russia. It is a 15ft bronze statue by Dzintra Jansone which was removed from a square in Preili, Latvia after the fall of communism.
Despite the long journey, many of the group said that they would like to return at a different time of year to explore further.
