The narcissi you cannot do without

DAFFODILS glaring from verges and parks are not among my favourite flowers. The brashest of the large gold trumpets bears the name of King Alfred, yet he was, by all accounts, a modest and thoughtful man.

- Mary Keen

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.