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MENDIP TIMES
Festival will fill Shepton with snowdrops
HOPE In Nature is the theme for this year’s Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival, featuring workshops, talks, street entertainment and an art trail as well as thousands of snowdrops. The festival is a celebration of the achievements of the town’s 18th Century horticulturist James Allen, hailed as the Snowdrop King for his work hybridising the plants. The highlight of the festival on Saturday, February 19th and Sunday, February 20th will be the unveiling of a 10-foot high carved stone obelisk on the Allen family grave in the town. Dr Tim Upson, RHS Director of Horticulture, Communities and Engagement, will give a James Allen Memorial Lecture as part of the festival, whilst Yeo Valley Garden will open specially. The festival patron is RHS Chelsea gold medal-winning gardener Dan Pearson, a keen collector of snowdrops. His enthusiasm was fired by gifts from
the garden designer Mary Keen. Dan said: “I now find myself with 70-or-so varieties, but even so I do consider myself still to be an amateur galanthophile! "Without fail, the early emergence of snowdrops will have me on my hands and knees, rummaging for their new life. Although I like the winter and do not want to rush it, the galanthus are important for their precociousness which, like a flare going off, announces with pristine surety that there is now a tilt towards growth." Amanda Hirst, a director of the Shepton Snowdrop Project, organisers of the festival, said: “We are thrilled to have Dan Pearson as our patron. There are some wonderful synergies between his description of his own snowdrop journey and that of James Allen, the inspiration behind our Snowdrop Festival. “He too was an amateur galanthophile and it's fascinating that each should have
embarked as amateurs on a love affair with snowdrops with such huge enthusiasm and great curiosity.”
Sculptor Sam Lee who, alongside woodcarver Amelia Crowley-Roth, is working on the obelisk
For details, visit: www.sheptonsnowdrops.org.uk
PAGE 76 • MENDIP TIMES • FEBRUARY 2022
