Notes on Daffodils
The most familiar bulb in Britain, and the most taken for granted. When and how to plant daffodils, why some clumps stop flowering, and how to grow the subtler ones worth looking at twice.
Nothing says the winter is over quite like the first daffodil.
They are so much a part of a British spring that we barely look at them any more — a blur of municipal yellow on a roundabout, cheerful and unremarkable. Which is a shame, because look past the brashest ones and there’s a whole world of daffodils that reward proper attention: the pale, nodding heritage narcissi, the sweetly scented pheasant’s eye that flowers last of all, the little species types no taller than your hand. Cheap, reliable, near-indestructible, and far more varied than their reputation suggests. There are thousands of varieties. Most of us grow about three.
So here are my notes on growing them — and on growing the good ones.
When to plant them
Daffodils like to go in early — they’re among the first bulbs I get in the ground, from late August through September. The reason is that they start making roots earlier than most, so the sooner they’re settled, the better they establish. If you only remember one thing about daffodil timing, make it this: don’t leave them lounging in the bag. Get them in while the others are still on the shelf.
Plant in autumn and they’ll flower somewhere between February and May, depending on the variety — and if you choose a few early, middle and late sorts, you can stretch daffodil season across a full three months rather than a single fortnight.
Planting them in the ground
Daffodils are a plant to be generous with. One or two look faintly apologetic; it’s the drift of twenty or thirty, or a whole slope of them, that stirs something. Plant them in bold sweeps through borders, along the edges of beds, or — best of all — naturalised through grass.
The method is forgiving. For a natural look, scatter a handful and plant each bulb where it falls rather than arranging them in rows; the randomness is the whole point. Plant them deep — at least three times the height of the bulb, and a little deeper still in a lawn — with the pointy end up and a couple of bulb-widths between them. Depth matters more than people realise: a daffodil planted too shallow will often busy itself making offsets underground instead of flowers above. Firm them in, water them, and leave them to it.
One small warning: daffodil bulbs can irritate the skin, so if you’re planting a lot of them, wear gloves.
Naturalising in grass — with one honest catch
Daffodils are the great naturalising bulb. Plant them in rough grass under trees or in an orchard and, left alone, they’ll not only return each year but multiply into ever-broader drifts — the loveliest, laziest kind of gardening there is.
But there’s a catch, and it’s worth knowing before you start rather than after. You cannot mow that grass until the daffodil foliage has completely died down — and that takes a good six weeks or more after the flowers finish. So a lawn full of naturalised daffodils means a shaggy, unmown patch right through May and into June, long after the flowers are a memory. Plant them where that won’t trouble you — in an orchard, a wilder corner, under trees — rather than in the middle of a lawn you like to keep trim. Get the spot right and it’s pure joy. Get it wrong and you’ll resent them by June.
In a pot
Daffodils are excellent in containers, and the miniatures especially — the little ones look enchanting at close quarters by a door.
Use a deep pot with drainage holes, raised on feet or bricks so water runs away freely, and a free-draining mix of peat-free compost with some grit through it. Set the bulbs about 5cm apart, pointy end up, top up with compost and water in. If you want a longer show, layer them into a “bulb lasagne” with muscari, crocus and hyacinths at their various depths, so the pot flowers on and off for weeks.
Daffodils will give you two or three good years in a pot. Each autumn, tip them out, discard any that have gone soft, and either replant or refresh the display — and rather than throwing the old bulbs away, plant them out in the garden, where they’ll happily carry on for years.
Why daffodils “go blind”
Here’s the daffodil problem you’re most likely to meet, and it has a name: blindness. An established clump comes up full of healthy leaves one spring and produces not a single flower. It’s a genuine puzzle the first time it happens, and almost always fixable once you know the causes.
Usually it’s one of a few things. The clump has grown congested and overcrowded, and simply needs lifting and dividing — the classic signal that it’s time. Or the bulbs were planted too shallow. Or, increasingly the commonest cause in our drier springs, the ground went dry too soon after flowering, so the bulb couldn’t build up the reserves to make next year’s bud. That last one points to the single most important thing you can do for daffodils, which is also the thing most often got wrong.
Let the leaves do their work
When the flowers are over, snip off the faded blooms so the plant doesn’t waste energy setting seed. Then leave the foliage strictly alone.
Those tired, yellowing leaves are working hard — photosynthesising, sending food down to refuel the bulb and build next spring’s flower. Cut them off while they’re still green, or gather them into those neat knotted bundles gardeners once loved, and you starve the bulb: hence the blindness the following year. Let the leaves flop and yellow and die back completely in their own time, however untidy it looks, and only cut them away once they’re properly brown. If the weather turns dry while they’re still green, give them a good soak — that alone prevents the commonest cause of a flowerless spring. A low-nitrogen feed after flowering helps too.
Only once the foliage is fully brown should you tidy it. And if you’re lifting bulbs to store, let them dry off and keep them in a paper bag somewhere cool and dark until autumn.
What to grow them with — and a warning for the vase
In the garden, daffodils are generous companions. Set them among hellebores in a spring border, run them through with blue muscari and purple crocus, or plant them with snowdrops and native bluebells beneath trees for a proper spring tapestry. Early tulips in a contrasting colour make a fine partner too.
One last thing, and it catches almost everyone out. If you cut daffodils for the house, don’t put them straight in with other flowers. Their cut stems ooze a sap that’s toxic to other blooms — tulips especially, which will wilt and collapse within hours of sharing a vase. The fix is simple: stand the daffodils on their own in fresh water for a day first, and once that sap has run its course they’ll mix quite happily. Just don’t recut them, or it starts all over again.
Get all that right — the early planting, the deep hole, the untouched foliage — and daffodils give more back for less effort than almost anything in the garden. Year after year, in ever greater numbers, asking almost nothing. The most familiar flower in Britain, and still, if you choose well, one of the loveliest.