Snowdrop Sensation

The Old Dairy Tearoom will be serving hot food and beverages. Tickets are available via pre-booking and early booking is advisable.

All visitors to our 2022 Snowdrop Sensation plant fair will need to pre-book their ticket including existing Great Comp Garden annual pass holders.

Ticket holders are welcome to enter the garden anytime between 10am – 3pm.

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Great Comp Garden created by Roderick and Joy Cameron in the 1950s and curated by salvia expert William Dyson is usually closed in winter, but the garden opens for just one day in February to welcome galanthophiles (fans of snowdrops) and share its winter secrets.

Curator William Dyson says: “Our Snowdrop Sensation plant fair featuring specialist snowdrop nurseries has proved to be a really popular one-off date for us in the past. It’s quite amazing how many ‘galanthophiles’ there are ‘out there’ and quite how far they’ll travel to buy and view rare and wonderful snowdrop bulbs.” Joe Sharman – also known in the Galanthophile world as ‘Mr Snowdrop’ is curating the nurseries attending, including Edulis Nursery, Monksilver Nurseries, Michael Broadhurst of Rainbow Farm, Rose Cottage Plants and Chris Cook..

These beautiful white flowers, whose delicate blooms signal early spring, first came to British shores with the Romans but it was the Victorians from 1890 onwards who really sought out these perfect white blooms.

Many of the most famous galanthophiles are commemorated in the name of snowdrops for example James Atkins, a nurseryman from Northampton was an early collector and the tall Galanthus ‘Atkinsii’ is named after him. But perhaps the most famous snowdrop is Galanthus Plicatus ‘E.A Bowles’ named after the famed snowdrop grower and collector E A Bowles from Myddleton House.