I have written before that possibly the best thing about February is that it is reliably followed by March! This is, of course, rather harsh and I hope that the rest of this blog will go some way to champion what the month really does have to offer.
In the 2021 February blog I was looking at some good winter flowering shrubs including Hamamelis (Witch Hazel), Cornus mas, Sarcococca (Christmas Box) and Chaenomeles. Nearer the ground in February we can also find some really hardy flowering plants – Galanthus (Snowdrop), Cyclamen coum, early Narcissi, Helleborus, Primula and Pulmonaria. As for February jobs, in 2021 Teresa and I were finishing off the winter pruning of Clematis, cutting back the remaining tops of herbaceous perennials, preparing the vegetable beds and continuing to feed the birds. In 2022, the blog came from the gardens at Aberglasney and in 2023 I continued the theme from the month before of bee-friendly plants. In 2024 I looked at some, perhaps, less well-known February plants including Iris unguicularis, Crocus tommasinianus, Bergenia purpurescens, Euonymus fortune ‘Silver Queen’ and Pieris japonica. There were also sections on making our gardens more bird friendly and peat-free composts. Finally, last year in February I was singing the praises of Mahonias and the importance of our soils, their components and main characteristics.
If you found last month’s plant profile on Mahonia ‘Charity’ interesting then I think you will find this month’s equally intriguing. In it, James Armitage in the January 2026 edition of the RHS magazine ‘The Garden’ looked at a plant which we all associate with this time of year- a Snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii ‘Mrs. Macnamara’. It is a particularly early bloomer, has a tall and stylish habit, narrow and glaucous foliage, strong and high stems, flowers poised with a ballerina’s elegance, the outer tepals (petals) slim in outline but thick-textured and the inner tepals trim and neat with a subtle green marking the shape of paired sycamore seeds.
However, surprisingly this literally flawless plant came from very uncertain beginnings amid a maelstrom of mystery and mislabelling!
The first person known with certainty to have grown this lovely bulb was Yvonne Macnamara, born Yvonne Majolier in 1886. During her early years she spent much time in France and became a well-known figure in Bohemian circles both on the continent and in Britain. She married Francis Macnamara, a minor poet, with whom she had four children, the third being a daughter, Caitlin, who grew up to marry the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. After Francis had abandoned the marriage the children lived a free and unconventional life, partly with their mother in her Hampshire home near the New Forest and partly at the commune-like household of the artist Augustus John at Alderney Manor near Poole, Dorset. Yvonne is not remembered as a gardener in the way that, for example, Vita Sackville-West and other contemporaries in the artistic set of the time are but she must have known enough to nurture a good snowdrop when she saw one!
Where exactly the plant came from is open to question. For many years the idea prevailed among ‘galanthophiles’ that Yvonne had collected it herself in the Caucasus, probably Turkey, but others have suggested that it was more likely simply a seedling of the many plants of Galanthus elwesii flooding into British gardens in the first half of the 20th century.
It is known with certainty, however, what happened next. Yvonne shared a plant or plants with John Newell who lived nearby in Hampshire and he in turn passed some on to two important figures in the snowdrop world- Richard Nutt of Buckinghamshire and Christopher Brickell who, as you know from last month’s plant profile, was responsible for providing the botanical name for Mahonia x media ‘Charity’. He identified the plant as Galanthus caucasicus (the name used at the time for G. elwesii) and distributed the plant further as ‘G. caucasicus wild collected’, having inherited the story that it was gathered from the Caucasus by Yvonne.
However, due presumably to some miscommunication, Richard Nutt was circulating divisions of his plants as ‘Dylan Thomas’s mother’s snowdrop’ (as opposed to his mother-in-law!) In this way plants raised from the original plant material supplied by Yvonne became grown as different plants- the Nutt lineage being called ‘Milkwood’ after Thomas’s well-known radio play ‘Under Milkwood’ and the Brickell material under the epithet ‘Mrs. Macnamara’.
The situation came to a head when plants under both names were received by the horticultural hero of this piece, John Morley. Born in 1942 he is best known as an artist and in particular for his paintings of plants but less well-known for his and his wife’s garden in Suffolk and their collection of, among many other plants, in excess of 300 different snowdrops and his nursery, North Green Snowdrops which only ceased trading in 2024. He, of course, quickly realised that although the names were different the plants were the same. Following this, at some point in the 1990’s a gathering was held to settle the matter at the home of another notable galanthophile, Colin Mason of Kenilworth, with Christopher Brickell presiding over the group. They all agreed that as the plants came out labelled as ‘Milkwood’, ‘Mrs. Macnamara’ and G. caucasicus ‘wild collected’ they were indeed all the same plant and all agreed that there could only be one choice for the final name and ‘Mrs. Macnamara’ it became.
I for one, now that I know the story and because I live in a part of Wales with strong connections to Dylan Thomas will definitely be looking out for this rather special plant with the view to adding it to our snowdrop collection however modest!
‘Ordinary’ Galanthus nivalis and the rather special ‘Mrs Macnamara’ courtesy of the RHS Magazine ‘The Garden’ January 2026
A second article which caught my eye in the Saturday 3rd January edition of the Daily Telegraph was an article by Tom Brown about one of our most loved garden birds- the robin. This russet-breasted songbird is a true companion of the gardener, happy to be with us in our beds and borders as we disturb the ground and expose insects and invertebrates. However, one of the biggest challenges for our robins is surviving the winter, particularly when there is snow on the ground which there is in our own garden courtesy of Storm Goretti as I look outside during the writing of this piece.
Each bird needs to eat roughly one third its own bodyweight each day to survive and one of the best ways to help them in such conditions is to provide supplementary food such as fat balls, high energy seeds and mealworms. However, it is just as important to garden in a way that encourages as much insect life and biodiversity as we can. Bug hotels and log piles can definitely help to increase the number of mini beats in our gardens as can mulching the soil in autumn with compost or well-rotted manure. Also growing a range of trees and shrubs that fruit throughout the autumn and early winter will also help to provide food at this difficult time of the year. I took great delight in our own garden this winter watching ‘our’ robin (in fact we have a pair now, if you see two robins together that are not fighting then they are a pair!) enjoying berries from both a Pyracantha and a Pheasant Berry (Leycesteria formosa). In the article James also suggested five excellent fruiting trees and shrubs which will benefit not just our robins but also a variety of other birds too. These were Malus ‘Red Sentinal’ (Crab Apple), the Guelder Rose Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’, the compact Strawberry tree Arbutus unedo ‘Compacta’, Crataegus x prunifolia, the Plum-leaved Thorn and the flat-stalked Spindle, Euonymus planipes ‘Sancho’.
Pyracantha coccinia ‘Yellow Star’ and ‘Red Star’
At this time of year particularly, shrubs and trees with colourful, patterned or tactile bark are at their most noticeable and certainly bring an added dimension to any garden. An article, again from the RHS magazine ‘The Garden’ in the January 2026 issue, saw Esther McMillan asking some experts to recommend plants with these features. She started the list herself with two of the best known and loved trees- the shining, white-stemmed birches and the copper pipes of the Tibetan Cherry which also both featured in the first expert’s list. Tracy McQue is a designer and garden advisor based in East Lothian. Her birch of choice is Betula utilus subsp. jacquemontii ‘Doorenbos’ and her Tibtean Cherry is Prunus serrula ‘Branklyn’ which has a narrower crown than the species but still exhibits the peeling stems with their metallic sheen and horizontal banding. Her third choice is also one of my favourites, Acer palmatum ‘Sango-Kaku’, the Coral Bark Maple, whose sunset glow of the stems will lift any garden. It is also fabulous in leaf, zingy green in the spring and summer and the orange and yellow in the autumn.
Nurseryman Philip Nieuwoudt, founder of New Wood Trees in North Devon, chose Betula ermanii and one of its cultivars B. ermanii ‘Grayswood Hill’. Slower growing than most birches they have papery bark on pale cream stems. They also colour beautifully in autumn with their small leaves a striking gold in October and November. His other two choices are both shrubs- Euonymus alatus (Winged Spindle) and Cornus mas (Cornelian Cherry). I have sung the praises before for Euonymus alatus for its blaze of red in the autumn and its bright red seeds but in winter these are followed by its skeletal beauty and texture of its stems and twigs. These are gently arching with a corky texture and strange fins which jut out all along them. Cornus mas is best known for its clouds of cheerful yellow flowers in January and February but older specimens also develop bark that starts to peel to reveal colourful patches like on a London Plane.
Jack Lindfield is head gardener at Sandringham in Norfolk which is not only a Royal garden but also a partner garden of the RHS. He chose, perhaps not surprisingly, some more unusual trees more suited to the larger garden. Stewartia pseudocamellia is a slow growing, deciduous tree with red, orange, brown and beige bark in a true camouflage pattern. Like its near relative the Camellia, it needs an acid to neutral soil and a sheltered position. In addition to its striking bark it has simple white flowers with golden yellow centres in the summer and fiery autumn leaf colour. His second choice was a deciduous shrub, Heptacodium miconioides. Its outer bark peels to reveal a smooth, tan-coloured layer beneath and it also has jasmine-scented flowers in late summer. His third choice was Eucalyptus gregsoniana, the Wolgan Snow Gum, which is a smaller version of E. pauciflora with smooth, matt-white bark that’s irresistibly tactile.
Finally, another Jack, Jack Aldridge, is a team leader at RHS Wisley and a member of the RHS Wisley Woody Expert group. His choices started with Syringa reticulata subsp. pekinensis ‘China Snow’. As a lilac it is a cloud of scented flowers in July but in winter curls of coppery bark peel off to reveal a smooth, mahogany trunk spotted with ivory lenticles (short, horizontal marks). His second is Cornus wilsoniana (Wilson’s Dogwood) which is an elegant tree with marbled bark in whites, greens and creams but unfortunately only after around ten years old. Finally, we come to Arbutus x reyorum ‘Marina’ which is a shrubby, evergreen version of the Strawberry Tree. Its cinnamon bark flakes to reveal a pale under surface and, as the name suggests, has pink-white flowers in late summer followed by strawberry-like fruits.
One of our Acers very similar to ‘Sango-Kaku’ and Prunus serrula
That’s all for this month. Have a good February and try to garden when the weather allows you to!
Keith.
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ORL Note -
We’d like to take a moment to say a huge thank you to Keith for the time, knowledge and enthusiasm he has shared over the years, both through his talks here at ORL and through his thoughtful and informative blog posts. Keith has been a familiar and much-appreciated face for many of our customers, and we’re incredibly grateful for everything he’s contributed.
Looking ahead, we’re pleased to say that we’ll continue to offer a programme of free talks throughout 2026, and we’re looking forward to sharing more details very soon. Keep an eye on our events page for updates and announcements.
Thank you again, Keith and thank you to everyone who has supported and attended the talks over the years. We hope to see a lot of you again soon!