Guide to Choosing, Planting, and Growing Daffodils
Get ready for daffodil planting time
If the ability to delay gratification is seen nowadays as one of those admirable characteristics that ensure success in a future life, then gardening is a great way to develop it.
From the end of August to October, while for most the garden is winding down, why not plot and plan your spring garden. And high on the list in any spring garden plan are daffodils and narcissi.
Not just a symbol of Welsh pride, the daffodil is one of the UK's most popular flowers and comes in all shapes, sizes and colours. Given that daffodils are so easy to grow, that they work well in all but the most importunate of soils, that they can cope with some shade and that they are not expensive, then it is obvious why we should all be buying daffs for our future gratification.
When to Plant Daffodils and How to Choose
Plant daffodil bulbs in early autumn, ideally September, and potted bulbs in spring before they come into flower. There are hundreds of varieties out there so to make life a little less complicated we have sifted through and suggested a few that are reliable, beautiful, disease resistant and long flowering. Shortlisted like that, all you need to do is choose the ones you want. Your choose will also influence when you should plant the daffodils.
For those unsure as to how to best incorporate daffodils into their garden here are a few questions and answers:
When do you want your daffodils to flower?
There are daffodils for February right through to May and they tend to flower for between 6-8 weeks. You can concentrate on trying to achieve a fantastic, dense display of one type of daffodil in March - using a daffodil like Irish Luck, which has a really long flowering period, is good for this.
Or, with a little clever combining, elongate the daffodil season to cover all three months. Some of the earliest to emerge are Tamara, Carlton, Golden Ducat, Ellen or the dwarf February Gold.
Mid-season encompasses the majority of daffodils, which will flower from mid-March through to mid-April - depending on what the weather is up to. Minnow, Fortune, Tete a Tete and Thalia fall into this bracket.
The daffodils that push the boundary are the Late Tazetta and Poeticus types like Cheerfulness, both White and Yellow and the dwarf Hawera, which all flower through to May.
What colour scheme do you want?
Oddly, this is more complicated than you might imagine. No longer are daffodils just golden, although many of them are - King Alfred, Irish Luck and Bestseller spring to mind. But there are also fantastic white ones, such as the magnificent Mount Hood or little Thalia with its two to three flowers per stalk.
There are dual-coloured ones like Red Devon and Jetfire (yellow petals, orange/red trumpet) and Ice Follies and Minnow (white petals, yellow trumpet), and then we also have the pink (yes, pink) daffodil called, of course, Pink Pride.
Bear in mind that most people consider it more effective to try to stick to a mass of one variety than have a hotchpotch of many types, which is not to say that off-piste and multifarious does not have its advocates as well.
Planting daffodils in pots: How big do you want them to be?
The space you have determines the size of daffodils you can plant. So, for some, a simple container or pot of daffodils will have to be sufficient. All daffodils work well in containers, but if your pot is at all exposed to wind or driving rain, it is worth buying either dwarf varieties like Tete a Tete or Canaliculatus or investing in sturdier stemmed varieties that support themselves: Sempre Avanti and Pink Pride grow to about 35cm, are unusual daffodils and would be good candidates for this.
Daffodils can be interspersed for spring interest in borders where most of the action takes place in summer or autumn. The taller varieties like Golden Ducat, Mount Hood and King Alfred are big enough to be mid-border, while the little tinies like February Gold and Minnow need to be right at the front to be seen.
The latter look lovely in rockeries, too. Lawns can be planted up so long as you don't mind a slightly shaggy sward into April or May because you can only mow six to eight weeks after the flowers and leaves have died back. It is probably advisable to stick to the earlier varieties for lawns proper, but for those of you with woodland, rough grass or orchards, just scatter some of the larger, more robust and late daffodils and plant them where they fall.
Equally, what could be more charming than a whole field of wild daffodils, which also have the key trait of being able to naturalise well and do so in the dappled shade of a wood? Varieties that naturalise produce more bulblets over time and multiply and spread. We have put together a naturalising daffodil collection, which includes Red Devon, Sempre Avanti and Carlton, for just such an informal situation. While anyone who has (or is planning) an orchard should invest in our Orchard collection of bulbs at the same time - function and beauty every time.
Simple and traditional or exotic?
For those who prefer an unadulterated daffodil, then consider planting the wild daffodil with its gentle yellow colour. The ice white, single trumpetted Mount Hood or bright yellow Bestseller are also classics of the genre. Alternatively, for anyone who prefers a full-on and frilly flower, then Golden Ducat and the non-identical twins Cheerfulness and Yellow Cheerfulness fulfil that brief. Our collection of AGM Prize Winners include Cheerfulness and the two-tone Ellen, along with gorgeous Pink Pride.
Which daffodils are scented?
Any daffodil that is either a jonquil daffodil or had one as a parent, like Cheerfulness, will have a wonderful, sweet and strong fragrance. Many of the dwarf varieties have been bred to have a strong fragrance because they are brought indoors to be forced or are grown in pots where you can actually smell the flowers. Hawera and Minnow have especially notable scents.
How to Plant Daffodils
1. Prepare the ground. Bulbs are the unfussy, so adequate drainage is their only real requirement, but they are still grateful for decent soil with a reasonable amount of organic matter worked in.
2. If drainage is very poor, your best bets are to simply find a drier spot, or to make raised mounds / ridges / beds. Still, as long as the ground is not regularly waterlogged, it's probably fine: in the wild, daffodils tend to grow in damp meadows, and do not really thrive in dry areas.
3. How deep do you plant daffodils? Preferably three times as deep as they are tall. They flower and naturalise better if they are planted deeper. The big mistake here is planting too shallow.
4. Achieve a natural look by avoiding even spacings. Try scattering small handfuls of bulbs and planting where they land, in drifts of at least 10-15.
5. While they are growing, daffodils (like all spring flowering bulbs, really) should not be allowed to dry out, especially in their first year.
Aftercare
6. Deadheading the flowers prevents your daffs from spending energy on producing seeds. This allows them to grow their bulbs instead, which multiply and produce more flowers the following season. Only remove the flower stalk, not the leaves.
7. Tidying up the leaves comes later, when they wither and begin to die back: usually 6 to 8 weeks after flowering. If the foliage is cut back too soon, resources are lost to the plant, and it won't flower as well next year. This is why wild and early flowering varieties are best for naturalising in your lawn: the grass won't get too long by the time the daffodils are dying back, which is when you can mow the whole thing for the first time each Spring.
Remember that because bulbs spend so much of their time under the soil, minding their own business, they should always be planted in conjunction with other plants with which they will cohabit quite happily. As an example, our daffs are followed by iris alliums and geraniums (not pelargoniums), then peonies, then phlox and then dahlias. Something going on from February until the first frosts.