Carol Klein is in primrose heaven at Glebe Cottage!
No flower heralds spring like it – and plants are easy to grow and care for
For me, the primrose’s charm is little short of magical. As you walk along our Devon lanes in the first weeks of the new year, your primrose antennae are tuned to pick up the first trace of pale lemon among the grass and wind-blown leaves in our tall hedgerows. First there are none, then one or two and then, before you know where you are, the banks are full of them.
To call a flower the epitome of spring is a bit of a cliché, but in the case of our native primrose, Primula vulgaris, it’s perfectly apt. No other plant gives the same feeling of spring’s inexorable progress – perfect pale lemon flowers with an egg-yolk centre balance on slender stems as nude and pink as a baby bird or a sugar mouse. Rosettes of crinkled, fresh green leaves sit comfortably in a hedgerow or ditch, or smother the ground at the woodland’s edge.
Primroses are incredibly tough and they’ll flourish in a garden situation as long as they get what they need – soil which is on the damp side, preferably humusrich, and a bit of shade during the hottest part of the year.
In the hedgerow they’re able to spread outwards from their old crown and make fresh roots or to seed themselves about, but in a garden setting it’s a good idea to divide them fairly frequently, discarding the old, hard, rhizomatous roots and replanting the newer, more vigorous pieces from the outside of the clump. We trim back their roots to about 10cm (4in), the length of your palm. The same method can be used to keep most cultivated descendants of
Primula vulgaris and its close alpine cousin, Primula juliae, in vigorous growth indefinitely.
The hybrids and varieties of these European species are legion and the hordes of highly-coloured polyanthus
‘Perfect pale lemon flowers with an egg-yolk centre balance on slender stems as nude and pink as a baby bird or a sugar mouse’
and primroses that throng garden centre shelves have all been developed from just a few species.
Primula ‘Wanda’ is one of the oldest varieties and has been a popular plant for decades. Its strident magenta flowers are a familiar feature to town and country dwellers. When I was young it used to fill the little front gardens of the miners’ and millworkers’ cottages. It’s an easy plant to ‘pass around’. As it’s almost indestructible, it offers encouragement to new gardeners and its vivid flowers are some of the first on the scene.
Recently it has lent its genes to a whole range of ‘Wanda’ hybrids – short, stocky plants, often with dark leaves and richlycoloured flowers, an inheritance from another contributor, the Cowichan Group.
This group was developed by Florence Bellis, an American concert pianist who, having no work at the time of the Great Depression, decided to try to develop primulas and sell them. Originally all her seed was from England and over a period of more than 30 years she worked on perfecting different strains, including the cowichans. The Striped Victorians Group, ‘Chartreuse’, ‘Desert Sunset’ and the Grand Canyon Group are examples of her work.
Later she succeeded in developing a seed strain that produced double flowers, difficult to do because doubles seldom produce pollen. It took a lot of painstaking work and must have been cold, too – primrose flowering time in Oregon must be chilly – but it was well worth it. Many of the modern double primroses we have today are descended from those she produced.
When she retired, Florence donated the fruits of her labour to Jared and Sylvia Sinclair, who for many years grew their
Barnhaven primulas in the Lake District. Nowadays Barnhaven is still going strong but has now taken up residence in France under the stewardship of Angela and Keith Bradford.
We grew a load of their seed last year and are just seeing the
first results from it. How exciting!