The options for a selection of favourite white-flowered bulbous plants are pretty vast and it would be dificult to choose a limited number. It seems to me that there is little to beat a white lily, and my first choice would always be Lilium candidum, whose white has a warmth I don't find in the Asian species such as L. longiflorum or L. philippinense, and the most glorious scent. Then there is L. martagon var. album, so cool for the woodland garden, and if I didn't garden on limestone, L. speciosum 'Album' and many of the oriental hybrids. Perhaps I should grow them in pots. If I could find a way to do it I would like to plant the woods here with thousands of Tulipa 'White Triumphator' whose elegant white flowers would hover through the green of the undergrowth, as the beech trees come into their own silken green. But how to avoid the snowdrops to do the planting? 'White Triumphator' looks fabulous in the borders anyway and there I like to precede it with 'Purissima'. Not quite so pure as its name suggests, 'Purissima' starts greenish cream and fades to ivory white, its massive flowers lasting for weeks if the weather is kind. There are plenty more white tulips, but these two are my favourites. Lots of white Narcissus suggest themselves, from the crystalline appearance of N. cantabricus, flowering in pots now, to the red-eyed N. poeticus in May, although I would avoid the heavier trumpets such as 'Mount Hood' just as I do their yellow counterparts, equally inelegant and difficult to place attractively. Pride of place among the species goes to N. alpestris, with lop-eared perianth segments and down-pointing trumpet, but alas, mine have all died out. I am particularly fond of white small cupped daffodils in Division 3, many of which have a wonderful soft green eye and throat, and a size and poise of great charm. It is the green throat that gives so much quality to Colchicum speciosum 'Album', the paragon of autumnal bulbs, and also to the purer white forms of Arisaema candidissimum. There are any number of good white Crocus, but in spring C. sieberi 'Bowles White' is hard to beat, retaining its golden throat. I have found C. goulimyi 'Mani White' to be a very reliable garden plant, forming a clump and coming up with a good tuft of flowers each autumn. Such plants occur occasionally in the wild in Greece - I saw one in the roadside ditch in the centre of the town of Areopolis - but a more memorable spectacle on the same day was a swathe of the white flowers of C. boryi across the green grass of some old terraces. Cyclamen hederifolium v. albiflorum, Nerine "flexuosa" 'Alba', Crinum xpowellii 'Album' and C. moorei 'Album' are all good. Zantedeschia aethiopica, growing in immense numbers at the foot of the Sani Pass about now, or in Cape Town a few months earlier: no doubt about its whiteness! Trillium grandiflorum. Galtonia candicans. Ornithogalums. Gladiolus callianthus. Oh, yes, and there are those things called snowdrops... HAPPY NEW YEAR John Grimshaw Dr John M. Grimshaw Garden Manager, Colesbourne Gardens Sycamore Cottage Colesbourne Nr Cheltenham Gloucestershire GL53 9NP Website: http://www.colesbournegardens.org.uk/ http://www.griffinpress.co.uk/