The Same Bulb, Wearing Boots
We normally carry the heirloom snowflake, and it’s the one I recommend to most southern gardeners. But I wanted to offer ‘Gravetye Giant’ too, because for some jobs it’s the better tool.
This is the same genus and species as our heirloom snowflake — Leucojum aestivum. So the hallmark Leucojum look is unchanged: white bells, green-tipped petals, nodding above blue-green foliage. The color pattern is identical. What’s different is size, vigor, and climate adaptation.
‘Gravetye Giant’ is taller — eighteen to twenty-four inches against the heirloom’s twelve to eighteen. It carries more florets per stem, often seven or more where the heirloom runs four to six. The individual bells are larger. It is, in the trade, considered the premium form.
William Robinson’s Snowflake
Here’s the story, and it’s a good one, because ‘Gravetye Giant’ is named for a house.
Gravetye Manor is an Elizabethan manor in West Sussex, England. It was the home of William Robinson — the Irish-born garden writer who, more than any other single person, killed the Victorian bedding scheme. Robinson is the man who argued that plants should be allowed to look like plants: drifts instead of carpets, naturalized bulbs in grass instead of geometric ribbons of annuals replanted twice a year. Everything you and I take for granted about how a garden ought to feel traces back through him.
The account of how the plant reached him is worth telling carefully, because parts of it are better documented than others. What’s clear is that an unusually fine, large-flowered form of the summer snowflake was known around Limerick, in Ireland, and Robinson — who visited Ireland — is understood to have been given bulbs of it. His leucojum had bigger flowers than usual and several to a stem. He gave plants away to visitors and friends, the way he gave everything away, and it became known as ‘Gravetye Giant.’
So the name on this bulb isn’t a marketing word. It’s an address. Somebody handed a good plant to the right man, and the right man handed it to everybody who came to the door, and now it’s in your garden a century and a half later. Robinson would have appreciated the mechanism — it’s exactly the kind of gardening he spent his life arguing for.
The Royal Horticultural Society has given it an Award of Garden Merit.
Which One Should You Plant?
This is the honest question, and I’d rather answer it plainly than sell you both.
Plant the heirloom snowflake if you’re in the Deep South, you want set-and-forget, and you want naturalizing. It’s the legendary survivor — heat, humidity, clay, wet springs, drought summers. It’s shorter, which is an advantage for naturalizing, and it tends to bloom earlier in a warm southern winter. Zones 6–10, exceptional in the Deep South.
Plant ‘Gravetye Giant’ if you want the show. Bigger flowers, taller stems, more florets. It’s vigorous but slightly less heat-tolerant than the heirloom, and it wants well-drained soil and part sun rather than whatever you’ve got. It leans toward cooler spring climates and does especially well in the upper South. It may bloom slightly later and last longer.
Both have the green dots. Both are tough by any normal standard. The heirloom is the one I’d put in a ditch; the Giant is the one I’d put where people walk past it.
The Name Is Still Wrong
One thing ‘Gravetye Giant’ inherits along with everything else: the misleading name.
Leucojum aestivum means “summer snowflake.” Aestivum is Latin for “of summer.” It does not bloom in summer. Linnaeus saddled the species with that epithet and it has been misdirecting gardeners ever since. It’s an early spring bloomer across its range and a late winter bloomer in the South. By summer it’s dormant underground.
Read “summer snowflake” as “February.” That goes for the Giant too, though it does tend to run a bit behind the heirloom.
Uses in the Landscape
Their ability to grow in sun or shade has made snowflakes a winner for woodland settings, roadside plantings, and garden borders. The Giant’s extra height changes where it belongs: it can hold its own in a mixed border where the twelve-inch heirloom would disappear, and it’s a far better cut flower.
When people tell us they can’t grow bulbs, we tell them to try snowflakes. That’s true of both forms. Scott Ogden wrote in Garden Bulbs for the South that this bulb “positively thrives in the South, and you could hardly ask for a more appealing spring flower,” and most spring-blooming bulbs are good only down to zone 8 or good for zones 8–10. Leucojum works across a far wider range than that. This fanciful bloom may look delicate; the bulb is hardy, reliable, and vigorous.
Planting & Care
Sun: Part sun to sun. Plant where they get 6+ hours of winter sunlight and you can honestly plant them and forget about them.
Soil: Well drained. The Giant is a little fussier here than the heirloom — give it drainage.
Depth: Two to three times the depth of the bulb. A 1-inch bulb goes 2 to 3 inches deep.
Spacing: Groups of four to six.
In the green: In spring we ship this bulb in the green — foliage still attached. Plant it as-is and let the foliage die back naturally before cutting anything. The rest of the year you’ll receive just the bulb. The browning leaves are feeding next year’s bloom back into the bulb; cutting them early is the one real way to hurt this plant.
Shop this variety at SouthernBulbs.com
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Starting at $20.00