Garden tips on narcissi or daffodils

GROWING GUIDE TO NARCISSI

Narcissi provide that long-awaited sign that the dark days of winter are finally over. Once you have clumps of daffodils flowering in the garden, the growing season is properly underway and, for those who like being in the outdoors, things are now only going to get better. We can start all those
optimistic springjobs - sowing our first seeds, planting broad beans and doing some wholesale garden clearing.

That's why you want to grow a good collection of early flowerers, forms such as the highly scented, multi-headed Narcissus 'Avalanche' and the funny- looking double, W. 'Rip van Winkle'. I have these daffodils  planted all around the edge of my fruit cage and they've come up stronger
and better each year, loving the coating of wood ash that they receive sitting alongside the fruit. These two daffodils mixed with white multiflora hyacinths, often give me my first fragrant bunch
of spring blooms to display inside.

I also like to plant W. 'Jenny'alongside hellebores - it grows and flowers well in a shady bed, in a rich soil with plenty of leaf mould - but it's hard to beat the pure-white 'Thalia', wh ich has several
fine trumpet flowers on one stem. We should all also have at least one patch of the quick-to-flower, miniature 'Tete-a-Tete' daffodils that wins bulb of the year by popular vote almost every season.
The requirements for daffodils bulbs in grass are different to a border - the ideal daffodil is one that will self-sow and slowly establish itself, spreading from single planted varieties into generous, natural-looking drifts. You can't do better than our wild daffodil of woods and hedge-banks,
N. pseudonarcissus. This daffodils looks brilliant planted into the rougher edges of a lawn or under fruit trees. As it goes over, introduce N. 'Actaea' to pick up its color baton, followed by the classic N. 'Pheasant's Eye'.

These three narcissi have just the right sort of fine leaves, and flower in neat succession, with
the last two also providing some of the most graceful, incredibly scented narcissi flowers you can grow - perfect for displaying in vases.

If you want more for cutting narcissi flowers, pick the multi-headed, highly scented  narcissi forms with a good vase life. Chosen randomly, daffodils can brown and go over i n a few days, but
with 'Geranium' and 'Silver Chimes', you can double or triple their life if you keep them cool. A drop of bleach or vinegar in their water helps prolong narcissi even further. Once those are finished, I like to have two brand-new forms for picking - the neat, outward-facing poetricus type, 'Felindre', and the delicate and elegant narcissi flowers 'Desert Bells', which has creamy-yellow blooms when it opens, fading to a beautiful ivory. 'Felindre' narcissi flowers is late enough to coincide with early alliums such as 'Purple Rain' narcissi flowers. Tuck ten or 15 stems of this variety into one firework allium and you've a bunch fit for a bride.

NARCISSI FOR OUTDOOR CONTAINERS

The healthy-looking daffodils in pots, silvery foliage of Narcissus 'W P Milner' makes pots of it look good even before there's any sign of the flowers - and then when these finally do arrive, they last longer than any other narcissi I know. If a child was to draw a spring flower, it would be N. 'Segovia' narcissi - dainty and outward-facing, the cheery heads of creamy yellow and pure white have a delicious scent. I have a pot of this daffodils in pots by my doorstep, so I can admire it several times a day in spring, or you could put it in pride of place in the middle of an outdoor table, with the occasional visit inside.

GROWING NARCISSI IN CONTAINERS

You want fine leaves for your daffodils in pots, rather than belt-like foliage, for narcissi in pots
and the smaller, more delicate forms look better than larger varieties. If you plant the narcissi bulbs deep enough (ten to 15cm deep), you can overplant with summer-floweres without disturbing the narcissi below.

For this sort of semi-permanent planting daffodils in pots, use a soil-based compost, such as John Innes No. 2, mixed with about a quarter of grit. To help good daffodils in pots flowering the following year, mix some comfrey pellets in as you plant.

FLOWERING NARCISSI SUCCESS

When daffodils are grown in grass, blind bulbs (those that produce leaves but no blooms) are the most common complaint about daffodils and a cause of argument in many a family. The mower wants to tidy up as spring begins and cut down the browning narcissi leaves, but, to make sure they
flower well next year, it is essential to delay the grass cutting until at least six weeks after blooming - so May for the earlies and well into June for the late forms such as 'Pheasant's Eye' daffodils.

Don't tie the daffodils leaves in knots: this makes the food created in the foliage more difficult to transport back into the daffodils bulb for building up a nutrient store to promote growth and flowering next year.

Over-congest ion won't encourage prolific blooming either. If a clump has been in for years, this May is the time to lift the whole lot, divide the bulbs up - just as you would a clump of snowdrops - and replant daffodils bulbs, spaced well apart. You'll hear people blame blind daffodils bulbs on being planted too deep, but in fact the opposite is the case. Shallow daffodils planting encourages
bulbs to divide, producing lots, too small to flower, so, when you re-plant, do so to at least twice the depth of the bulb.

NARCISSI FOR INDOORS

'Paper White' is an obvious choice for narcissii for indoors. Each stem has up to ten white flowers
with a strong scent. They last well kept cool on a north- or east-facing windowsill. To create a centerpiece, stack three pots on top of each other, decreasing in size, and support with silver birch sticks. 'Paper White' narcissi is best early in the year; try orange-centered 'Cragford' later in the spring.

SARAH RAVEN