Open Country Radio 4
Alan Street’s life has been shaped by a delicate white flower – the harbinger of Spring.
The story begins in an old churchyard when he was just 16 and he spotted and named his first snowdrop.
He was still at school and wanted to be a psychiatric nurse but the flower enchanted him and changed the course of his future. He became a nursery man.
He is not alone as producer Polly Weston found when she interviewed him.
Galantophilia is a little like Tulip Fever – the Dutch passion for the tulip that once saw a single bulb selling for the price of a house.
A single bulb of a certain snowdrop went for £1,300 on ebay, said Alan.
The quest for the snowdrop has even led to snowdrop crime …13,000 snowdrops were dug up one night recently from an abbey in Norfolk.
But money is not what interests Alan.
True gardeners are kind with their plants – once upon a time galantophiles shared their flowers just for the love of it, no money changed hands.
As this thoughtful gentle story unfolded, it became clear that Alan’s love is rooted in the people who shared his love of snowdrops; the people whose names live on in the dainty flowers.
The Victorians believed in the language of flowers, he said. The snowdrops come in January – the early harbingers of Spring – the first small white flowers to put their noses up out of the icy winter soil.
They were traditionally planted in graveyards – they are a small white message of hope.
He pointed out a snowdrop named Adam – called for a young man who died suddenly at a young age. He smiled down at Primrose, the formidable “queen of the snowdrop queens”.
So many of the flowers bear the names of friends who have passed away. It is how they live on.
He talked of how long ago, snowdrops were planted on paths leading to the privy outside people’s back doors. In the days before electric lights, you might find your way out and back by the soft glint of the little flowers in the darkness.
This was a beautiful, thoughtful study of a gardener’s life given meaning by the slow cultivation of the snowdrops. The snowdrop is a small unassuming plant but a tiny beacon of hope in dark days.
