Fritillaria meleagris

We planted 5,000 snakeshead fritillaries last autumn as part of a rural garden design in the Saffron Walden area. As with all bulb planting, it's one of the few garden jobs that you see no difference in at all until they start coming up months later. The success rate was high and we were eagerly anticipating their beautiful chequer-board flowers this Spring when the leaves started to poke through earlier in March. Horrors!! Without exception all the flower heads have been eaten or broken off! Is it pheasants? Could it be rabbits? Squirrels? Any ideas?
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    What a shame.

    I was hoping that you were going to say you had a photograph of them in bloom :-0(
  • Simon, don't know if you get to Cottenham much but there is a large cottage (to the right of the Green as you enter the village from Histon) which has the most fantastic and fabulous display of Fritillaries in the front garden.
  • A small percentage of the group in the main body of the garden are OK, so could perhaps do a few close-ups but it's certainly not giving the effect we were after. I was looking forward to some good shots myself. Perhaps I'll venture over to Cottenham and take a piccy of those. Utterly frustrating!
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