BEFORE the advances in colour printing technology in the 1980s encouraged the expansion of high-quality, colourdrenched magazines and newspaper supplements, gardening columns in January and February mainly consisted of advice to readers about how to construct a garden shed, lay a path or choose a lawnmower. However, the opportunity to produce good-looking features, filled with alluring photographs of what was flowering at the moment, changed all that. Thus was the cult of the snowdrop born. Previously,
