A brush with snowdrops

Tilly Ware meets the artist and galanthophile John Morley in his Suffolk garden, home to the oldest snowdrop nursery in the country

THE 2024 North Green Snowdrops catalogue is now a collector’s item. After 40 years, the artist and serious galanthophile John Morley has decided to close his business, the oldest snowdrop nursery in the country. His first catalogue in 1984, written in green ink by a former typist of Winston Churchill’s and printed on folded foolscap, listed 22 different snowdrops ranging from £2.50 and £5 per bulb. In the early years, Mr Morley’s eloquent plant descriptions were accompanied by his exquisite woodcuts, paintings and line drawings; the later catalogues include glossy photos and increasingly exciting rarities, many of which Mr Morley discovered in his own garden in north Suffolk. Gardening and art were always intertwined for Mr Morley, whose grandfather was a gardener, and he remembers going to his allotments to…

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Country Life (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 26, 2025

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