All the small things
Plant pretty miniature narcissi this weekend for some welcome pockets of sunshine in the garden
THERE are some groups of plants I like to keep adding to in my garden, and at this time of year I simply can’t get enough of miniature narcissi.
Go along to your local nursery or garden centre right now and you’ll find potfuls of them bursting into flower and ready to be transferred to your garden or into tubs, containers and windowboxes to bring instant colour right up to the house.
Without a doubt, the most popular variety is ‘Tete-a-tete’ with its nodding, bright yellow flowers that are often (but not always) carried in pairs – hence the name. The reason this variety is so popular is it is incredibly reliable and keeps coming up and flowering its socks off, year after year, unlike some of those massive daffs that seem to produce nothing more than grassy foliage after a few years.
I have three large tubs containing olive trees. They sit alongside my shed and to cheer them up a bit I planted ‘Tete-a-tete’ narcissi in the surrounding soil a good seven or eight years ago. I do nothing to them, other than watering the olives in summer and (when I remember) adding a drop of liquid feed – but that is rare. In the rootridden earth the narcissi erupt each spring to give me a flower show that I really don’t deserve.
The other great thing about dwarf narcissi is they suit the scale of small gardens and are not bowed down by snow and rain as are the larger daffs like ‘King Alfred’ and ‘Carlton’, which always seem to be martyrs to slug and snail damage.
The time to plant dwarf narcissi is in autumn, but we all forget, from time to time, where the gaps are in our beds and borders. So buying a few that are about to flower in their small pots right now is a forgivable sin. It allows us to brighten up dreary patches of bare earth.
When you plant them in the garden, do remember to set them a good two or three inches deep.
Their leaves extend and bulbs will flower more reliably in future years.
Among my favourites are ‘Little Witch’, ‘Jenny’ and ‘Jetfire’, and none of them will cost you an arm and a leg.
If there are spare pockets of earth in your garden, add a bit of sunshine with miniature daffs and narcissi. You’ll never regret it.