Little help wished

[Hagen Engelmann]

Dear galanthophiles
there is a little town in the south of Brandenburg, called Uebigau. It has a small manor house and also a nice garden area around. I designed the new court and the green parterre. In the same time a lonely galanthophile planted thousands of galanthus in the park. His idea is to plant snowdrops, mostly Galanthus nivalis, from the whole Europe to get a very big diversity of genetic basis for the population. First result is a real longer flowering season.
Now we are two galanthophiles and we divide a lot of joy.

Here are some more informations:
http://www.park-uebigau.de/html/schneeglockchen.html
There is a small article also in the “Gartenpraxis”  12/2013.

Yesterday he asked for a little help.
Please, who can help with a little plant gift/donation?
Please send to:

Peter Manig
Parkweg 19
04938 Uebigau
Germany

[Tim Ingram]

Hagen - this sounds an interesting idea. Don't think I can help with a donation but on a much smaller scale I have had good success increasing nivalis from fertile plants simply by planting seed pods when nearly ripe. This is a lot easier than planting 'in the green' and good flowering occurs within three years with quite a natural effect of small groups of seedlings.

[Brian Ellis]

What a good idea, I'm sure I have a few  that I can spare, but would it be better to send them as they are dying down this year?

[Hagen Engelmann]

Hello Tim,
the way by seed seems much easier, I agree with you. But Peter had learnt to plant in the green. Last year he got thousands of flowers (with bulbs on the underside) to his birthday. And he planted and planted.....
Yes Brian, dormant bulbs are also better. And I know the way from UK to Germany by post can be long. Often seven days or more. On the other side, in the green you can see what you will give out of your garden. This is dormant much more difficult. Every coin has two sides.

Thank you for your interest. We are happy (and Peter has to do the work )about every small parcel.

[snowdropcollector]

Hagen, this is a interesting idea. I agree with the others. If some will send snowdrops, you will get a great diversity of genetic, and let us see what this will bring in the future 
I will send some Flore Pleno's , Nivalis and Elwesii's. All are collected from different parts of The Netherlands. So maybe there
already will be diversity of genetic in this snowdrops.

[Maggi Young]

Vielleicht sollte ich etwas Einreibemittel für Peters Knie schicken?     

Perhaps I should send some linament for Peter's knees ?   

[annew]

Hagen,
can you tell us more exactly what is needed?

[Hagen Engelmann]

Thanks Richard, till now we have no plants from the Netherlands.

Maggi, he is a gardener and a galanthophile too. He will plant the incoming bulbs on fresh air in the park. It is like holiday.

[Hagen Engelmann]

Anne, we try to collect a big genetic potential of normal galanthus.
Here in Germany we have only G nivalis.
But the the habitat is also good for elwesii or plicatus.
We don't need no special cultivars.

[Alan_b]

Hagen, I am concerned that the spot your friend is shown planting snowdrops in the picture will prove far from ideal for them.  I moved house about 16 years ago and bought a few hundred Galanthus nivalis which I tried to naturalize in my lawn.  Over the next few years they all disappeared except for a few under the silver birch tree which have continued to this day.  The grass under my silver birch tree always remains sparse whereas the rest of my lawn grows quite lush in summer.  The lesson I learned is that nivalis snowdrops are not big and strong enough to survive under lush grass.  More recently I tried an Atkinsii/James Backhouse n the lawn and even that remained at a standstill for several years until I took pity on it and moved it to a more hospitable location.

     

[zwerggarten]

well, well.

here in germany, we really do have more than g. nivalis - as you, hagen, are one of the best examples of.

and this galanthophile of uebigau - he is not at all a galanthophile, he definitively is more a galanthohoarder.

but: he truly is an absolutely likeable guy, please send him all snowdrops you can spare!

[Hagen Engelmann]

Alan, I agree with you, it is absolutely important where you plant the galanthus.

zwergo, das mit der Metasequoia ist doch wohl Vergangenheit.....good to meet you here too

[Lesley Cox]

Hagen, it sounds as if there may be a love story in there somewhere - "now we are two galanthophiles" - was it the snowdrops that brought the two together? I think it would we a wonderful thing to share one's love of gardening and plants with another of like mind.

[Alan_b]

he is not at all a galanthophile, he definitively is more a galanthohoarder.

I like that concept and I like the word but I wonder if we can shorten it to "galanthoarder" as that rolls off the tongue a bit more easily?  Although then there might be some confusion with the term "galanthorder" - which is what you send in to the likes of North Green Snowdrops after perusing their catalogue or list. 

[Lesley Cox]

Then there's "galanthodisorder," the condition suffered by those galanthophiles who overindulge on Ebay.