Wednesday, 5 March 2014
The Best Daffodil Plant List Ever
Gardeners and Designers, save this List! Naturalizing Daffodils Organized by Bloom Time
Daffodils blooms may be months away, but fall is the time to order and plant your spring bulbs. Ive always said that bulbs are by far the best bang for the buck of any plant you can buy. For a few hundred bucks, you can create a spring spectacle with flowering bulbs. Bulbs are a wonderful asset for the gardener and designer. Designing with bulbs can be as complex or simple as you like. Ive experimented quite a bit with different bulbs, from species tulips to woodland ephemerals, but my staple—the most reliable and rewarding spring bulbs—continues to be naturalizing daffodils.
All Narcissus are good perennial plants, but there are a handful of daffodil varieties that actually naturalize. Naturalizing plants actually reproduce new bulbs underground, thickening over time and producing more flowers. Since these bulbs reproduce rather easily, they have another advantage: they are the cheapest daffodils on the market. You can’t beat that.
In my designs, I like to mix at least three varieties of daffodils—an early, mid, and late-blooming Narcissus—in order to extend the bloom time over two months. But I’ve always had the problem of determining when daffodils bloom. Bulb catalogues are notoriously vague about this information (mostly because it varies so much depending upon where in the country you are). They often organize their catalogues by Divisions, making it almost impossible to determine what blooms when. There are so many hundreds of varieties of Narcissus, it becomes incredibly difficult to choose.
But thanks to Van Engelen company out of Connecticut for providing this wonderful resource of naturalizing Narcissus—the most affordable and reliable Narcissus on the market—and organizing them by bloom sequence. This list includes bulbs from multiple Divisions, including the ever popular Large Cupped and Small Cupped daffodils. But what I’m increasingly drawn to are the smaller, heirloom Cyclamineus, Jonquilla, Poeticus, and species daffodils. These smaller bulbs have tremendous potential for combining with other perennials in the garden, creating outstanding spring combinations. Designers and gardeners, you’ll definitely want to save this list as a resource:
Earlier Blooming Naturalizing Narcissi
Trumpet Daffodil Rijnvelds Early Sensation
Miniature Trumpet Daffodil Little Gem
Miniature Trumpet Daffodil Topolino
Large Cupped Narcissus California
Small Cupped Narcissus Barrett Browning
Cyclamineus Narcissus February Gold
Cyclamineus Narcissus Tête-á-Tête
Species Narcissus obvallaris
Mid Blooming Naturalizing Narcissi
Trumpet Daffodil King Alfred
Trumpet Daffodil Marieke
Trumpet Daffodil Mount Hood
Large Cupped Narcissus Accent
Large Cupped Narcissus April Queen
Large Cupped Narcissus Delibes
Large Cupped Narcissus Fortissimo
Large Cupped Narcissus Fortune
Large Cupped Narcissus Ice Follies
Large Cupped Narcissus Pink Charm
Large Cupped Narcissus Professor Einstein
Large Cupped Narcissus Salome
Cyclamineus Narcissus Peeping Tom
Poeticus Narcissus Actaea
Later Blooming Naturalizing Narcissi
Large Cupped Narcissus Flower Record
Double Narcissus Cheerfulness
Double Narcissus Yellow Cheerfulness
Poeticus Narcissus Pheasants Eye
Triandrus Narcissus Thalia
Jonquilla Narcissus Quail
Since Van Engelen provided this list, please check out their website, www.vanengelen.com. Van Engelen requires a wholesale account, so if youre not a business, try their sister company John Scheepers www.johnscheepers.com. Brent and Beckys Bulbs is also a wonderful place to buy bulbs.
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