Flashback to 1998 - one of the Midlands' best spring gardens

Her collection of galanthus - the Latin name for those brave plants with their pristine white bobbing heads - was growing all the time.

But the garden at her Dial Park home at Chaddesley Corbett didn't rely on the white of this fascinating plant - it had just about every flower that dares to flower at this time of the year.

“I have acquired quite a lot of new snowdrop varieties recently although frankly there does not seem to be a huge difference between many of them” she said.

Often there are just a few different markings on those blobs of beautiful white blooms which sends the collectors of these harbingers of spring scuttling around to get them in their collections.

But to people like Mrs Mason, a real gardener as well as a collector, this was a fascinating coroner of horticulture.

And she managed to pop them into her delightful corners so they were a real part of the February scene.

It was a remarkable garden because in 1998 she and her husband David had been in their bungalow home for only seven years -and the plants looked as if they had been there for decades.

The garden - exactly halfway between Kidderminster and Bromsgrove on the A448 - was visited by hundreds of visitors every year.

People travel from all over the region to marvel at her ever-increasing collection of fine plants, firstly for her snowdrops in January and February and now to see the other fascinating flowers that flower later in the season.

The couple created it from an old garden and yard and some of the soil was as hard as rock and simply dead and in need of new life.

So Mrs Mason, who lived at the farmhouse next door before the move, pumped in mountains of manure and compost and just about any humus she could get her hands on.

The garden changes non-stop through the year, and its multi-seasons interest is based on having lots of colour from flowers, foliage, fruit and bark.

Mrs Mason aimed to have flowers around her home every day of the year.

This included lovely cyclamen coum thriving in the well-drained raised bed in the cooler spots under a walnut tree.

They could be found midst many marvellous marbled cyclamen hederifolia, and iris reticulata which were replacing the earlier show of winter aconites and snowdrops.

Her borders were covered in a wonderful woodland-like covering of the beds - broken down manure, old compost and lots of leaf mould. Some of the really class plants like the hellebores were doing well with their blotched and speckled faces braving the cold winds and rains.

The hellebores - some of them bred by nearby Ashwood Nurseries - were doing well in the Mason’s garden with their gorgeous flowers as brave as the snowdrops.

“I really enjoy growing the hellebores and I have got some quite nice of my own seedlings coming along,” she said.

“They are gorgeous and are really good value because they are in flower for a long time," added Mrs Mason.

The stunning collection of the winter-blooming beauties is spellbinding and was being expertly supplemented by new forms she has grown from seed.

Mrs Mason also grew hepaticas, tiny forms of corydalis and dwarf narcissi, all them knitted in between fine shrubs like viburnum bodnantense with its pink blooms lighting up another dreary February day.

At the time of the Express & Star's visit mini-daffodil Bowles Early Sulphur was just beginning to bloom, following on from the incredible Cedric Morris variety which had flowered through January.

All of these plants were allowed to seed down on the woodland-like floor and Mrs Mason always hand-weeded with comsummate care to ensure that the little treasures were spared the sharp edges of the hoe.

The new seedlings helped to build up the garden into the real treasure it was - a garden well worth a peak at this time of the year.

Mrs Mason "I love this time of the year because the flowers are so brave and beautiful.

"Flowers come up through the frost and are a delight to everyone who sees them."