Daffodils: the quintessential sustainable plant

Just down our road there is a small field where, every spring, hundreds of daffodils push up through the meadow grass to greet the sun. They were planted by the people who, back in the seventies and eighties, lived in the house across the road. But that house has been empty for a good while now, and certainly there is nobody to coddle the daffodils.

My garden is full of daffodils as well, and I like to think they too will give pleasure to people who will be enjoying this place after me. Daffodils are tough survivors in neglected spaces.

This week, wherever I look in the garden, I see these great islands of yellow and white. There are daffodils in the flower beds....too many perhaps. But there are also daffodils in the rough grass around our pond and in the scrub at the edge of the woods. There are even daffodils under the birch trees alongside our dirt road....these are for my neighbors to enjoy as they walk or drive by.
 
Back in the fall of 1994, which was the beginning of time in my garden, I bought about six varieties of daffodils, and a dozen of each kind. I sunk them in the ground, somewhat randomly, in groups of threes or fours, along the axis of my new big flower bed. During the first few years the results were skimpy to say the least... a few flowers dotted around here and there...certainly no lavish display. But with the passage of time these six dozen or so bulbs have transformed themselves into the thousands of flowers that Dick and I enjoy today.

How did this happen? Every year towards the end of May, after the flowers are finished but the leaves are still green, I set aside a little time to lift and divide any daffodil clumps that seem to be in the wrong place in my garden, as well as clumps that are becoming less prolific. I then replant these bulbs, anywhere I would like to see flowers to brighten my springs. I plant them with their leaves intact, or ‘in the green’, as we sometimes say, so they can continue photosynthesizing food to fuel next year’s show.

Over the years I have found out the hard way that it is best not to grow daffodils in the middle of the bed where, come June, their spent blooms and yellowing leaves are right next to the peonies and roses. Of course, as everybody knows, if you want a bulb to bloom next year, you must leave the foliage to mature...i.e.turn an ugly yellow, until in early July it wilts in a messy heap on top of the mulch. I follow this advice to the letter. However, contrary to advice from more fastidious gardeners, I do not find my inevitable lack of deadheading in any way ruins the chance for flowers next year.

So I have stopped planting any more daffodils in my flower beds (though inevitably plenty remain from my early plantings). I have also stopped planting them in the lawn to ‘naturalize’ as some garden books advise. In the past Dick has complained vociferously about having to mow around their maturing leaves. 

Now I plant my daffodils in any rough grass around the property (sunny or partly sunny suits them fine) where unnoticed they can quietly mature and die back, and then next spring reappear even more numerously.

This all works because over time a daffodil bulb (or any other true bulb for that matter) gradually expands itself by spawning side bulbs. And, after a decade underground, a single bulb, together with its progeny, will reward us with a huge clump of flowers. Eventually, as things get a bit too close for comfort down below, the number of flowers in the clump may start to diminish. But this has not happened yet with the daffodils in the field up the road, and by my reckoning they have been already there untouched for at least twenty years.

 So, with a small investment of time, you can reposition any badly placed or crowded clumps of daffodils and replant them wherever where you would enjoy a splash of yellow or white next spring. I think of it that my time investment to divide and replant the bulbs is rewarding me with compound interest.