The joy of daffodils – and which varieties you can still plant now for spring blooms
Is there anything more uplifting than the daffodil? As a harbinger of spring, it’s hard to beat the joyous colour and delicious scent – eulogised by poets and playwrights, and loved by the rest of us as a reminder that winter is almost over. The earliest blooms will be appearing this month.
The reputation of the flower has, perhaps, been tarnished by the readily available, cheap-as-chips and often garish bunches sold in supermarkets across the land. But there is far more to the daffodil than these bright yellow blooms, exemplified by the sheer variety being grown and arranged by the floral designers and flower farmers who seek out the most interesting varieties.
The narcissus is a huge genus (the number of species is hotly debated) and there are tens of thousands of cultivars. And all are arranged in a mind-boggling system of “divisions” – from tazetta and jonquils, singles or doubles, small cups or large cups, poeticus and triandrus. Its range stretches from miniatures that only reach 15cm tall, such as the pretty lemon ‘Minnow’, ivory ‘Toto’ or the ever-popular golden ‘Tete-a-Tete’, through to the tallest 50cm varieties such as the perennial favourites, such as ‘Actaea’, that are perfect for naturalising into lawns or meadows.
For narcissi supremo Johnny Walkers, the classification system is irrelevant – his advice is to choose the flowers you love: “People can be a little bit baffled, but it’s not that important,” he says. “As far as gardeners are concerned, the important thing is that they get the colour they want and they get the long flowering period that they want.”
And it can be an extremely long season, lasting from February (the cheery yellow ‘Rijnveld’s Early Sensation’ can flower through January too) right up until early May, when the elegant N. poeticus var. recurvus is blooming. It’s an even longer season if you include the narcissi that grow on the sunny fields of the Scilly Isles, which are harvested from November.
Walkers is a third-generation bulb grower whose parents came to England before the Second World War, settling in Lincolnshire, which was then known as South Holland for its hub of Dutch bulb growers. He grew up among bulbs and worked for his father before joining Lingarden (a co-operative of more than 100 growers spread across the UK), and then set up Walkers Bulbs in 1986. He will be known to many for his beautiful stands at the RHS Chelsea Flower Shows, which won 25 consecutive gold medals.
Now retired, for the past seven years he has been collaborating with Hever Castle in Kent and its head gardener, Neil Miller. Daffodils have been a spring feature on the estate since William Astor bought the property in 1903 and created new gardens and a 38-acre lake, planting thousands of daffodils, including the extremely popular golden-yellow ‘King Alfred’. Now Miller and Walkers select thousands of new bulbs to be added each year, culminating in Dazzling Daffodils, a week-long celebration of the flowers, from March 18, that sees the pair lead twice-daily tours to view around a quarter of a million blooms.
Aside from its spirit-lifting display and association with spring, Walkers puts the daffodil’s popularity with gardeners down to the fact that it’s completely foolproof, too. “Just give it a bit of moisture and a bit of compost and you can have success with it,” he says. “It gets results. It doesn’t matter how wet it gets – to a degree. Generally speaking, the weather in this country is sufficient for it to flower, whatever you do to it.”
It’s why the UK is the world’s biggest producer of daffodil bulbs, grown over 11,000 acres of land, especially in the moisture-retentive, well-drained soils around Lincolnshire and the Fens, but also in Devon, Cornwall and Scotland.
The bulbs are also incredibly resilient, lying dormant in undisturbed soils. At Hever, where banks of rhododendrons and wild overgrowth have been removed, narcissi have come up having not been seen for decades or more. In Anne Boleyn’s orchard on the estate, the gardeners have found the original double yellow N. telamonius plenus – sometimes known as ‘Van Sion’ – a variety that dates from pre-1620 and is prized for its longevity and its ability to naturalise. They’ve also found ‘Rip van Winkle’ (pre-1884), ‘Sealing Wax’ (1957) and ‘Ice Follies’ (1953), among others.
And in many cases it’s the heritage cultivars – and their myriad forms – that are fuelling a renewed interest in the flower. There’s ‘Mrs RO Backhouse’ – an elegant cream flower with a soft apricot-rimmed cup, that was hailed as the first “pink” daff when it was introduced in 1921. In the same year, ‘Cragford’, with elegant white petals and a dainty orange cup, was introduced – the beautiful ‘Barret Browning’ (1942) has a similar look.
Several of the heritage varieties have copious ruffles, from the deliciously scented ‘Sir Winston Churchill’ (1966), which is multi-headed and has soft cream blooms with orange centres, through to the more extravagant ‘Delnashaugh’ (1978). ‘Replete’ and ‘My Story’ have similarly frilled blooms.
But some of the most popular old varieties can be traced much further back. The stunning yellow ‘Grand Soleil d’Or’ was grown in the 1800s. The Pheasant’s Eye narcissus was in cultivation during the 1600s, while Paperwhite narcissus was documented as early as 550 BC.
The best bulbs for growing and cutting
The colour palette of the heritage narcissi spans from snow white and the palest yellow through to salmon pink and coral, and their forms range from the simplest dainty cups to fully ruffled blooms that look more like peonies or roses, which make them brilliant for cutting and arranging. Cut them before the flower opens at the “gooseneck” stage (when the flower is still slightly nodding before opening) to get the longest vase life, and condition them separately from any other flowers as the sap is toxic to other plants.
Or just display different varieties of narcissi en masse – floral designers and growers including Milli Proust, and Erin Benzakein of Floret Flowers, display narcissi in a theatre of old stoneware bottles or short vases to best showcase their myriad shapes and colorations.
Whatever kind of garden you have, there’s a narcissus to fit – the miniature varieties look stunning planted in pots of a single variety, especially if you select a mix of early, mid and late-season bulbs that will provide a constant burst of colour. Nearly all narcissi associate well, but some make particularly beautiful partners; the paler cultivars such as ‘Thalia’ also combine brilliantly with tulips, while ‘Bell Song’, with its soft apricot cups, looks exquisite with antique pink tulips such as ‘Belle Epoque’.
For larger gardens with grassy areas, the taller species that will readily naturalise can be planted in drifts or around the spring blossom of fruit trees. “I grow my daffodils in an orchard, under old apple trees,” wrote Vita Sackville-West in 1953. “Not a very original idea, but so irresistibly pretty that no gardener could afford to reject it.” Among the paler varieties she favoured were ‘Beersheba’, introduced in 1923 by the prolific breeder Rev George H Engleheart, as well as ‘Tunis’ and ‘John Evelyn’. The orchard at Sissinghurst remains one of the very best places to see swathes of narcissi in spring.
From a sustainability perspective, narcissi prove a far better investment than some other spring bulbs, especially tulips, which are normally consigned to the compost heap after one season. They will flower year after year and most will naturalise too, readily multiplying in number with zero effort required. Many will bloom for decades, and in some cases for centuries. Enthusiasm for the flowers is summed up in the string of village shows, festivals and garden openings dedicated to the flower that will kick off in February – the perfect chance to discover new favourites to add to your garden next autumn.
Potted narcissi to buy now
While autumn and winter are the best time to plant daffodil bulbs, nurseries and garden centres usually have a selection of the most popular bulbs potted up to plant in spring.
Narcissus ‘Minnow’
(£4.99 for a one-litre pot, Webbs)
A perennial favourite for good reason, and thanks to its diminutive size, it looks lovely in pots.
Narcissus cyclamineus AGM
(£9.50 for a 9cm pot, Twelve Nunns)
A petite daffodil, given the RHS Award of Garden Merit.
Narcissus ‘Jetfire’
(£4.99 for a one-litre pot, Webbs)
A stunning miniature daffodil with reflexed yellow petals and long orange trumpets.
Narcissus ‘Lemon Drops’
(£24.95 for three 9cm pots, Sarah Raven)
Exquisitely pretty: palest lemon to ivory in colour. This multi-headed narcissus will work in pots or naturalised in grass, and will grow to 45cm.
