Like many garden owners, I have a problem with the colour yellow. As much as I like the sunshine in the sky, yellow always seems somehow clumsy and kitschy in my flower beds. So even daffodils used to be rather rarely on my shopping list. Most of them have something to do with yellow, and I definitely prefer the subtle and broad colour palette of the tulips. Sure, planted wild in the huge meadows in front of English country houses, daffodils look great. I anyways can hardly think of a plant that doesn’t look great in front of an English country house. Unfortunately, my garden has more of a shoebox layout and here the flowers have to bring poetry of their own accord, as they can’t borrow it from the surroundings.

I only changed my relationship to daffodils fundamentally through the slow flower movement. Slow flower farmers grow cut flowers professionally with great idealism. In North America, England and increasingly also here in Germany. Grown locally, seasonally and in organic quality, the original idea was to counter the florists’ flowers, which come from overseas and are usually produced under devastating conditions, with an environmentally friendly, sustainable product. But in order to deliver good, interesting goods for high-class floristry, a lot of new ideas were needed. Roses in winter and dahlias in spring are just as impossible for a slow flower farmer as exotic plants that don’t stand a chance in our climate.

But limitations make for creativity, as we all know. And so the small slow flower farms have searched for the most spectacular, extraordinary varieties of plants that can tolerate our local climate – and they have found them. The floristic aesthetics that resulted are breathtaking. And for me, as a garden owner, this movement became one of the greatest sources of inspiration in recent years. Daffodils are not just yellow and white to me now, they wear ruffled peach ballet skirts (‘Delnashaugh’), stage little springtime explosions in the beds (‘Replete’), are more fragrant than the most intense jasmine (‘Bridal Crown’) and enchant me with their apricot rimmed trumpets on creamy yellow petals (‘Blushing Lady’). The daffodil has become something like the rose of spring for me. Nevertheless, I somehow still don’t like yellow in the garden. But I am happy to have discovered lemon, vanilla, buttercream and peach as colours for me thanks to the new varieties.

First published in the 2nd issue of the wonderful flower magazine let it bloom.

Our daffodil collections will be back in the shop from mid-September!