H. O. Greatorex s garden Snowdrop Acre.

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1 H. O. Greatorex s garden Snowdrop Acre. Many years ago when I worked for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust I was approached by Broadland District Council asking if I would carry out a conservation assessment on a small piece of land they owned in the parish of Witton, which lies between Postwick and Brundall. I arrived at the site in the middle of summer to find a carpet of head high nettles under trees. It did not look very exciting, but there were some unusual trees and shrubs in among the nettles. There was, and still is, a fine specimen of the Himalayan horse chestnut Aesculus sinensis together with Osmanthus burkwoodii, Mahoberberis aquisargentii and very surprisingly the hermaphrodite form of butchers broom Ruscus aculeatus. It was clear that this had been a garden. Having handed in my very short report I was told that I should have visited earlier in the year when it is covered in snowdrops. When I asked how on earth the District Council came to own the site I was told it had been acquired from the Greatorex family. Suddenly the site had become a lot more interesting. When I started collecting snowdrops one of the first doubles to be acquired was Jacquenetta soon followed by Cordelia and Ophelia. Collectively these and many others are known as the Greatorex Doubles. Heyrick Anthony Greatorex was born on the 28 th of February 1884 at 126 Loughborough Park, Brixton, the second of seven children born to Heyrick Anthony Greatorex senior and Mariane Lavinia Caunter, nee French. His parents had both been married before. Their wedding took place in St. Johns church Brixton on the 4 th of December The family moved around a good deal but by 1901 had taken up residence in a large Georgian house in Sawbridgeworth called Rowanberry. This name may sound familiar, as it is now the home of David and Victoria Beckham and family. The Greatorex s had six house servants, a gardener and estate labourers. Heyrick senior was a successful stockbroker. In 1897, Heyrick junior, aged 13 was sent to Repton School in Derbyshire. The Greatorex family and their name originate in that county. In 1251 there are references to Great Reaches, which was a small farming community, now called Great Rock farm in the Derbyshire High Peak between Buxton and Tideswell. Heyrick left school in 1901 and we know little about him until he appears in Norfolk in 1915 where he marries Janette Elizabeth Tillett of Witton in the parish church on 25 October. He was 31 years old and the marriage certificate records his profession as gentleman. Interestingly by the time he died in 1954 his profession was Retired Poultry Farmer. During the First World War he joined the Inns of Court and City Yeomanry Officers Training Corps on 23 November His regimental number was 7670 and he served in numbers 5 and 6 Company attaining the rank of Corporal. The fact that he joined the Inns of Court and City Yeomanry suggests that between 1901 and 1915 he may well have been training as a lawyer. On 25 September 1916, he was commissioned into the Norfolk Regiment. He initially joined the 8 th Battalion and then served in France and Flanders with the 9 th. He was wounded in action at Lagnicourt and was discharged having been awarded the Victory Medal and the British Medal. He returned to Norfolk where he spent the rest of his life. During the Second

2 World War he joined the Norfolk Batallion of the Home guard based in the Great Yarmouth area. His Platoon guarded Acle bridge but local rumour has it that he spent little time outside the Bridge Inn next door. Heyrick died on 31 January 1954 aged 69. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Brundall churchyard. This is something of a contrast to his great-grandfather who is buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. His grandfather Thomas Greatorex was born on 5 October 1758 in North Wingfield, Derbyshire. He was a well-known musician and organist as well as being a Fellow of the Linnaean Society. From 1819 until his death in 1831 he held the post of organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey. His son William, Heyrick s grandfather was the one who introduced the rather odd name of Heyrick. We will never be sure where it came from, but the family wonder if the following has something to do with it. William s aunt and his grandfather were both organists at Leicester Cathedral where the town clerk was one John Heyrick. There is a statue of John Heyrick in the cathedral and he was certainly an influential figure and was well known to William and Martha. Heyrick was certainly a character and stories about him abound. The house at Wittton was described as bungaloid, constructed of brick, timber and corrugated iron. Although the house was pulled down and cleared in the late 1970 s a small part of the foundations can be seen to this day. It was a very small house with primitive plumbing and drainage. The spare room was an old railway carriage in the garden. The house and land were owned by the Tillett family. We know Heyrick lived there from 1915 to1954 thanks to the mountain of correspondence with the local District Council. Heyrick was in dispute with them all the time over planning permission, of which there was none, drains, which were in very short supply and the rates. In 1954, the Council told Janette that she could stay in the house for the rest of her life. When she died in 1971 the Tillett family applied for planning permission, which was refused. A purchase order was served and the Broadland District Council became owners of the site in The garden and the house is still owned by the District Council and managed as a nature reserve by BADCOG the Blofield and District Conservation Group. It is known locally as Snowdrop Acre. From 1917 until 1952 Heyrick occupied a piece of land much larger than the present day Snowdrop Acre. It included all the land now associated with the house called St. Andrews. The Tillett family sold the bulk of the land to a Dr Hilton who built the present house. The 1946 and 1948 aerial photographs show Snowdrop Acre as a densely planted garden.so much so that it is almost impossible to make out the building. The rest of the site (6 acres) was grass with many trees and shrubs and what look like orchard trees with a complex system of paths radiating from the house. This area today is totally different being lawns with some trees on the edges. Snowdrop Acre is a rather shady site with a light, well-drained soil ideally suited to snowdrops. For his breeding purposes Heyrick grew Galanthus nivalis Flore Pleno and Galanthus plicatus but he had many others as well. G. woronowii occurs in several dense

3 patches. There is little or no variation and it sets seeds only rarely. This is somewhat surprising as there are many clones in cultivation that set seed regularly. The rabbits however do a good job in spreading them around. G. ikariae does very well here and sets lots of seed. Pretty well every flower produces a pod, which is very unusual for snowdrops in Britain. Most of the population looks very close indeed to G. ikariae Butts Form but there are some seedlings with green patches on their outer segments. He also grew G. nivalis Sharlockii with its large split spathes resembling donkey s ears and G. nivalis imperati, which, is a particularly large neat form from southern Italy. This mixture of the best forms available at the time has, over the years led to a vast number of interesting seedlings. Twenty four of the seedlings that have occurred on this site are named and described in what has become the bible of snowdrop growers Bishop, Davis and Grimshaw 2001 [1]. More famous snowdrops have come from this garden than any other in Britain. Fourteen of these plants were selected and named by Greatorex himself. He released Nerissa, Hippolyta and Lavinia before 1948, with the rest of the Shakespearian Characters, namely Cordelia, Desdemona, Dionysus, Jaquenetta, Titania and Ophelia following before his death in All these plants have survived to this day and are widely available at, what for snowdrops is a reasonable price. They make excellent garden plants, which bulk up relatively quickly. The only problem is telling them apart. One, rather curious character of these plants is that when first planted they produce juvenile flowers that often look very different from adult ones. This also happens if a bulb produces a second flower. White Swan and Jenny Wren are less well known than the above and it is thought that the Greatorex originals have been lost to cultivation and that two rather undistinguished snowdrops have taken on their names. Greatorex gave a seedling to Frank Waley, a well known Hertfordshire bulb grower, which is now known as Poseidon and two to Lewis Palmer known as L. P. Long and L. P. Short. Lewis Palmer was a very influential and respected gardener who gardened at Headbourne Worthy in Hampshire and is best known for the Agapathus Headbourne Hybrids. Then in the 1970 s Fred Bugloss, a senior member of the Royal Horticultural Society s Join Rock Committee, visited the site and collected three more double snowdrops that are known as G. 71, G. 75 and G. 77. Thankfully no more doubles have been named since then. Some of the above are rather similar to each other. Greatorex transferred pollen deliberately from G. nivalis Flore Pleno onto selected forms of G. plicatus to produce his seedlings. As with many double flowers, snowdrops are double because the stamens have become petaloid, rendering the plant sterile or nearly so. In a population of double snowdrops a careful search will usually reveal a small amount of pollen. For most of Greatorex s life there were no nurseries offering specialist snowdrops for sale. The first to do so was the Giant Snowdrop Company and they produced their first list until then snowdrops were largely passed around and swapped among an elite group of gardeners. Greatorex s plants were distributed this way and through the RHS s garden at Wisley. He pre-dates twin-scaling which has revolutionised the growing and selling of snowdrops in the last 25 years. He had to wait for clumps to

4 build up on their own and some do this very slowly. We can now increase them at least 10 times faster. Today lots of people are deliberately breeding snowdrops but Greatorex was the first, and for many years, the only one. Although he was regarded as a recluse for the latter part of his life he must have had contacts with many important and well-known gardeners in order to gather together his superb collection of rare and unusual snowdrops. By the same method he assembled some very good Colchicums, which grow in Snowdrop Acre to this day including Colchicum speciosum Album, C. speciosum Atrorubens and C. Dick Trotter which were not available in the trade at that time. Recently several interesting plants from Snowdrop Acre have been named. Probably the best and most famous is G. Greenfinch. A fabulous flower of great substance, Greenfinch has large inner and outer marks of a very strong dark green. The outer marks are streaks rather than blotches and look as if they have been thickly painted on. The tips of the outer segments are somewhat pinched in. When happy this is a big strong plant, that is quite distinct and well worth growing. G. Mr Spoons is a similar but less robust plant with smaller green marks and with distinctly spathulate outer segments, hence the name. The site has produced many interesting oddities, five of which have been named. G. Barguest and G. Bishops Mitre are both Sharlockii types but the former has no green markings on the outer segments and the ears of the split spathe are somewhat hooked at the tips. G. Bishops Mitre is very striking indeed with strongly split spathes and a good green mark on its outers. What makes this plant extraordinary is the very short scape and very long pedicel, which means that when the flowers first come out they sit on the ground. Mattadors is even odder. It has good green marks on its outer segments, but the pedicel is so short that the flower remains within the spathe. This snowdrop does not dangle as they should, but remains, in an interesting and some may say rather ugly semi-upright position. A rather lovely short, squat plant is Quintet which when well nourished will produce five outer segments. It is elegant and easy to grow, putting on weight relatively quickly. The last cultivar to mention is Clovis. This plant sometimes has three outer segments and three inner segments, when it looks rather boring; other times one or two outer segments and five or four inner ones when it looks very unusual but rather ungainly; and occasionally it has no outer segments and six inner ones when it looks magnificent! A typical clump will include all possible combinations. Bulbs will do different things in different years. It is a fascinating plant and a real talking point. If you visit Snowdrop Acre today you will find a huge range of snowdrops including a small number with two flowers on each scape. What at first seems like a rather dull garden is in fact a treasure trove, the most significant snowdrop site and a memorial to a fascinating character. My thanks are due to Sonia Greatorex, a distant relative, for much of the research on Heyrick s early life.

5 Richard Hobbs Reference: [1] Bishop, M., Davis, A. and Grimshaw, J. (2001). The Griffin Press, Maidenhead. Richard Hobbs is a botanist and gardener with a great interest in the environment. He and his partner, Sally Ward, run a small holiday business showing people wild flowers all over the world He holds the National Collection of Grape Hyacinths and runs a mail order seed business