Whilst recently walking Yogi through a snowdrop carpeted wood on our ‘sniffari’ I thought, ‘I think snowdrops are my favourite flower’. But of course I’ll think that about each flower as they come in to bloom. Apart from berberis and pyracantha, possibly. If you are a gardener or have had dealings with these shrubs then you’ll know these spiky shrubs don’t do themselves any favours when it comes to making friends. Any encounter with them usually results in spending evenings picking the thorns out of your hands.

Of course both berberis and pyracantha are excellent hedging plants and useful, unless you are the one having to cut the hedge. When I used to give ‘Guard your Garden’ talks for Dyfed-Powys Police, everyone (apart from us gardeners) was always surprised by just how much of a natural deterrent a spiky hedge could be.

For this reason I often recommend planting gooseberries as part of an edible hedge, as they add a level of security as well as the harvesting potential. We have recently planted an edible hedge for a client and included red, black and white currants, thorn-less blackberries, raspberries as well as the gooseberries.

It is true, as my rewards-based client pointed out, that the birds may well beat you to 50% of the fruit but I think fifty percent of something is better than 100% of nothing. An edible hedge also has the benefit of feeding wildlife, and adding seasonal interest to the garden with the gooseberries making it somewhat impenetrable.

Back to snowdrops – although superstition has it that they are unlucky if brought into the house, they do make lovely cut flowers in a little vase and are particularly effective if that vase is placed on to a mirrored tile or even a handbag mirror. This allows you to see the underside of the bowed heads, which are stunning and actually seldom seen. I recently picked a little vase of snowdrops for Mum and when I placed them on the mirrored tile, realised that some of the snowdrops in my garden are the ‘double flowered’ ones – with quite frilly innards!

Another wonderful thing about snowdrops is that they provide essential early food for the bees. Over the years I have spent longer than I probably should have watching bees enter the bowed heads and then reversing out with bright orange dots on their back legs. This is the snowdrop pollen that they have put in their little pollen baskets. Not only does that skill never cease to amaze me but who would have thought that snowdrop pollen would be bright orange.

All pollen is a different colour and it is fascinating to watch my honey bees return to their hives with their different coloured bounty and of course is an indicator as to what they have been foraging.

Back to snowdrops (again) and there is a lot of folklore around these ‘heralders of spring’ - both positive and negative. They do tend to signify the nearness of spring and in one legend, it is said that an angel breathed life into a snowflake, which transformed it into a snowdrop, and which then broke the spell of winter.

However, snowdrops have also been associated with death and mourning. Their white petals are said to resemble a corpse's shroud, and their drooping heads are said to look like funeral mourners. But I suppose it’s all about how you perceive death. As Oscar Wilde mused, ‘Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence.’