For more than 40 years, I have been growing daffodils in small gardens in eastern Canada and California, usually just planting them wherever I could find room.
But it is only recently that I have realized that daffodils are primarily garden flowers.
Now I am acutely aware of the casual way they are generally treated and would like to pass on some of my experiences to other gardeners who want daffodils to be an integral part of their garden picture in spring and not too great a liability after that.
First, don’t plant daffodils in single or even double lines; they are flowers to grow in clumps in a small garden, in masses in a large one.
Like other seasonal flowers, they are out of place used as year-round foundation plantings or along front walks; shrubs are best for the former and the latter’s flowers of a long season.
If you must do most of your gardening in front of your house, plant groups of daffodils between shrubs and use clumps of them in perennial borders.
Of course, you must remember that daffodil foliage must be allowed to ripen for next year’s bloom.
Interplanting Daffodil Planting
By interplanting with Dutch iris (the daffodils 6” inches deep, the Dutch iris, 3” inches), I can get a second crop of bloom a month or six weeks after the daffodils.
Since these iris have inadequate foliage, they look far better than if planted alone.
Later I plant petunias or other recumbent annuals between these two. This gives a fair effect in summer, and the water they require does the bulbs no harm.
Many Californians believe daffodil plantings must be left dry, but they do best when summers are short and rainy.
The war years, when garden help was unavailable, were a survival test for the daffodils in my one-acre garden on the eastern slope of the Berkeley Hills, where aspect, good, deep soil and the long, cool springs of the San Francisco Bay climate–never hot, never really cold – favor most daffodils.
I planted a two-part daffodil border through the middle of the property, from south to north.
A section of this is shown in the two photographs at the top of the opposite page.
Fortunately, there were already shrubs and flowering trees, mainly Japanese cherries, crabapples, and magnolias, extending throughout the border.
Deciduous trees, I have found, provide the ideal shade for spring-flowering bulbs.
Approach From The South
The main approach is from the south, and there is a natural tendency for the flowers to turn in this direction.
Planting the upper part of the property was easy, as most of the trees were up the hill to the west, and the daffodils naturally turned their faces to the sun and the path.
On the lower side, the plantings were made less wide and more marginal (for design purposes, the plantings on each side of a path should not be the same width).
By the use of evergreens below these plantings, the daffodils were also induced to face the path.
The scale of my garden is large, and the groups of varieties must effectively suggest this; a gardener with a smaller lot must make necessary adjustments.
Where I may plant at the rear of the lot 100 bulbs of TUNIS, FORTUNE, or CARLTON, he may use 25 or perhaps only a dozen.
Middle-range varieties are used in smaller groups. In the path plantings, I tend to use novelties, grouping those of similar garden effects together for comparison because they give a more homogeneous effect.
Although cloudlike or fishlike outlines are often recommended, this is not practical where one has to lift the bulbs occasionally.
I have resorted with daffodils, like iris, to rectangular plantings of different depths and lengths, labeling each group at the upper left-hand corner.
I also plan the whole planting, as I have not yet discovered the imperishable label or the stake, which will never be pulled out.
Early And Mid-Season Varieties
I have found it best to use groups of early, midseason, and late varieties, although there are more late ones at the southern approach to the border.
Visitors always proceed at once to those in full bloom early in the season.
Early and midseason varieties (predominantly yellow trumpets and large cups) are best planted to the rear, with the late-blooming varieties, mainly whites, along the edges of the paths, for the eye carries back over them and focuses on them when they are in flower and the rear ranks gone.
Whites who make good combinations with flowering magnolias are grouped near them, and the yellows are placed near shrubs that do not conflict.
This may sound complicated, but as you become better acquainted with your daffodils, you will find it an added pleasure to plant them just where they will be most effective.
We only dig and replant our daffodils when they show that they resent overcrowded “slum” conditions. Each named daffodil is an individual with its characteristics.
Some varieties increase very rapidly, others hardly at all. Some are thinned out by incursions of the daffodil fly or reduced in numbers by the stripe virus or basal rot.
We leave large plantings alone. for several years, for only in this way can we get thick mass effects, and replanting is a big job to avoid as long as possible.
Novelties receive special consideration, however, for we want to increase our stocks of them.
The main border is never really weeded but is left to dry off; weeds in it are hoed off when the daffodil foliage turns yellow.
We found that removing every weed early in the season left the ground so bare that many of the flowers were badly muddied by splashing during heavy rains.
The only feeding our daffodils ever get is from the rotted humus dug in before planting. Daffodils are not gross feeders.
As a daffodil fancier for nearly 25 years, I feel qualified to say that for garden effect, novelties are unnecessary.
The same general results I get could be obtained from the best standard varieties. Mixed daffodils are a snare and a delusion.
Their different flowering periods, varied forms, and colors give a restless, casual effect.
At the same time, our objective is a more carefully planned effect, with groups of the same variety massed to lend homogeneity.
As seen in the mass, daffodils are either yellow or white. It is the perianth that determines the all-over effect.
Lovely as the colored cups in red, orange, or pink are, their beauty is for closer examination.
In selecting varieties, consider sturdy constitution, free flowering, stiffness of stem, stance (long necks mean drooping flowers), clear coloring, good substance, and a fairly flat perianth.
A show perianth with completely filled-in, rounded petals is not necessary.
Daffodils For Beginners
Here are a few good garden effect daffodils for the beginner. Among the yellow trumpets, I would suggest the following:
- ALASNAM
- DIOTIMA
- DAWSON CITY
In California, the popular KING ALFRED is not a dependable garden flower year in and year out.
In the white trumpet group, I would recommend MRS. E. H. KRELAGE and, where it does well, BEERSHEBA.
Among the large cups, which I consider the ideal type for garden effect, I would include the following:
- FORTUNE and CARBINEER, the two yellows
- NARVIK, with a red center
- CARLTON, LICINIUS, and ST. EGWIN, all solid yellows
- TUNIS and JOHN EVELYN, with white perianths and large cups
- DIANA KASNER and NETTE O’MELVENY, late-blooming, short-cupped daffodils
The best poet daffodil to use in this way is ACTAEA.
I would not hesitate to introduce the cyclamineus hybrid FEBRUARY GOLD into the front ranks of a daffodil border, nor have I bona the jonquil hybrids anything but assets.
I particularly like TREVITHIAN and LANARTII.
I find the bunch-flowered tazettas or their hybrids (the poetaz group), the lovely triandrus hybrids I grow informally on a slope, and the species or wild forms that are best grown by themselves.
The doubles are for those who especially like them and for cutting, but they don’t seem to fit my own daffodil border.
40127 by Sydney Mitchell