I prefer the much smaller wild daffodil, which made Wordsworth dance for joy, but true Narcissus pseudonarcissus is hard to find in bulb catalogues these days. In our last garden, it seeded like grass, so anyone who can find seed and has the patience to wait could still enjoy this elegant flower with pale petals and lemon-yellow trumpet. N. obvallaris, the Tenby daffodil, is a pure yellow wildling, which is easy to source, but it has a more strident presence than the gentle pseudonarcissus.
What Alan Street of brilliant Avon Bulbs refers to as the Old Ladies—the earliest cultivars of this familiar flower—tend to be the only large daffodils I like. With floppy petals and subtle colouring, they are an acquired taste that is appealing to more and more gardeners. Narcissophiles do exist and heritage daffodils are beginning to be as sought after as rare snowdrops. If you like a flower with broken, rather than solid colour, an old variety called ‘Princeps’ is worth hunting down.
Some of my other favourites are ‘Bath’s Flame’, ‘Lucifer’, ‘C. J. Backhouse’ and Narcissus barri conspicuous (syn. N. ‘Conspicuus’). The National Trust’s Cotehele in Cornwall and Wimpole in Cambridgeshire are good gardens to visit for historical daffodils.
Denne historien er fra March 23, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 23, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
