The Giant Snowdrop Company

摘要

When Brigadier Leonard Mathias DSO retired from the Indian Army in 1945, he and his wife Winifrede came to live in England. They initially looked for a house in Norfolk, where her parents lived. However, when their first house purchase fell through they decided to look further afield. They focussed on Stroud in Gloucestershire, which they knew from visits to an aunt who lived locally. They eventually bought Hyde Lodge at Chalford, Gloucestershire, which had been the home of plantsman Walter Butt from 1920 to 1940. Butt had cleared and planted the sloping 3ha site himself. By the time he left, the garden at Hyde Lodge featured one of the finest tree and shrub collections in the country. However, labour shortages during the Second World War meant that it had been left to run wild.