AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
As though to resolve the argument about when Spring starts a dozen daffodils opened their trumpets in my garden on St Bridget’s Day. Snowdrops may have grabbed the headlines for February as the stars of Co. Carlow’s Snowdrop Gala but daffodils have a longer season, from February through to May.
They are tops in floral inspiration for poets from Shakespeare to Wordsworth with his ‘host of golden daffodils’. Despite their frequent appearances in print though, they aren’t native to these islands but were introduced from Mediterranean countries like Spain and Portugal by the Tudors in the 15th Century.
Gardeners love daffodils: AKA Narcissus, there are now more than 13,000 varieties, divided into 12 different groups with poetic names like Tazetta (Little Cup).
While 90% of cut flowers bought here are imported, Irish-grown daffodils are turning the tables. A million daffodils a week grown at Elmgrove Flower Farm are exported to New York and European cities, including bulb capital Amsterdam. The story of how Darragh McCullough’s farm at Gormanstown, Co. Meath, became Ireland’s largest flower farm, producing 13 million stems of flowers and foliage a year, suggest that those golden daffodils have a Midas touch. Darragh’s father Eamon began growing daffodils to produce bulbs alongside crops like onions on their 100 acre mixed farm. “Then he realised he had a second crop and we began selling daffodils in calf buckets by the side of the road until the end of April,” Darragh laughs.
The next step to build on this springtime bonus was to extend the season with other flowers from peonies to dahlias until there was a year round supply of blooms. One thing led to another: 18 months ago, Darragh opened a successful farm shop, with coffee, food and all kinds of activities from PYO daffodils to school visits.
Co. Kilkenny has its own daffodil success story, the Daffodil and Bulb Farm produce an amazing two million bunches of daffodils on a 500-acre family farm for export to cities from New York to Paris. The firm also specialise in supplying as many as 100,000 blooms for weddings and corporate events and sell bulbs harvested in June, specially processed and ready for planting in September.
Daffodil breeders Dave and Jules Hardy helped to put Irish daffodils on the map last year when the Irish Daffodil Convention centred in Ulster near their daffodil farm in Co. Tyrone. Esker Daffodil Farm builds on a tradition of daffodil breeding stretching back 200 years which began in Co. Cork. The convention, held every four years in different locations, attracted over 60 representatives from as far afield as New Zealand and Australia. Both Dave and Jules are teachers and a chance meeting at the Enniskillen Gardening Club with daffodil breeder Brian Duncan led to Dave buying his first starter pack of daffodils.
The seeds – or should it be bulbs?– of enthusiasm were sown, and the couple began growing the bulbs on their two-acre farm producing their first daffodil catalogue in 2016 and later incorporated Ringhaddy Daffodils. They now grow more than 800 varieties, including Irish daffodils with evocative names like Finn McCool, Paddy’s Legacy, Irish Charm, and Causeway Sunset.
Breeding daffodils takes time, Jules explained. From cross-pollination, it takes three to four years for the resulting bulb to mature and produce a flower. If this is a successful hybrid it then takes about 15 years before the results become commercially viable. Growers may have to make hundreds of crosses before they get a daffodil with the desired features.
While we don’t have daffodil mania here akin to the extraordinary Tulip Mania – a speculative investment bubble which seized Holland in the 1630s – collectors are prepared to pay as much as €80 to €100 a piece for rare and unusual bulbs while special snowdrops can fetch even more. Generally, though they are an affordable treat. Planted in Autumn at three times the depth of the bulb, daffodils are easy to grow, with the leaves needing to be allowed to die down to feed bulbs
The flowers, with their Spring message of brighter days to come, are also the emblem for the Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day, to be held on Tuesday, March 25 this year to raise funds to fight cancer and support patients and survivors.
