There are many bulbs which are grown in the UK, but the largest group of British Grown bulbs by far is surely the Daffodil, with UK farmers producing more daffodils (predominantly in Lincolnshire and Cornwall) than the rest of the world put together!
A British garden just isn’t complete without this patriotic flower (symbol of Wales) which cheerfully announces the arrival of Spring!
Daffodils offer excellent value for money and are really easy to grow and care for. They are versatile either for the garden or as cut flowers. Planted outdoors they will happily naturalise, flowering year after year – all they require is a sunny spot in a well-drained soil. After care requires minimum effort – daffodils can simply be dead-headed and the foliage left to die back, feeding the bulb for the next year’s blooms.
Daffoidls have a wide variety of planting applications; if space is limited, they are ideal for pots and containers, especially the more showy varieties such as “Delnashaugh” or “Acropolis”. In the garden, they can be planted en masse as either mixed varieties or clumps of singular varieties. For a more natural look, they can be planted in drifts or even under planted in grassed areas. This can be achieved by carefully lifting the turf, planting the bulbs and then replacing the turf back on top. Or, if it’s cut flowers you are after then why not try planting in rows in either the allotment or vegetable garden?
There is a vast range of choice of colour, petal shapes, double, single and multi-headed blooms, fragrance, small or large cups…..there are British grown daffodils to suit all tastes and requirements. If a careful choice is made, and weather permitting, is it possible to have 5 months of non-stop blooms from January all the way through to May:
- Spring Dawn – One of the earliest daffodils to appear, flowering from January onwards. Flowering height 25cm
- Dutch Master – Flowers February/March, classic daffodil, delicate scent, strong stems, golden yellow, flowering height 40cm, RHS Award of Garden Merit Variety
- Ice King – Flowers March, double cream blooms, fading to white, flowering height 35cm
- Sealing Wax – Flowers March, yellow with orange/red cup, flowering height 40cm
- Yellow Cheerfulness – Flowers April – double, scented, RHS Award of Garden Merit Variety, flowering height 40cm
- Pheasant’s Eye (poeticus recurvus) – Flowers May – distinctive, fragrant, flowering height 40cm RHS Award of Garden Merit Variety
Taylors Bulbs, situated in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, farm over 750 hectares of which in excess of 150 ha are purely daffodils; an astounding 3,000+ tonnes of them pass through their main site each summer.
Taylors also force over 80 tonnes of daffodil bulbs each year for flower production under glass from early November to February. They market over 20 million outdoor blooms, the bulk of which are exported, although they supply an increasing number of daffodil blooms to garden centres throughout the UK.
Other British grown flower bulbs include the sweet smelling English Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta). A staple flower of British woodlands, English Bluebells are not to be confused with the Spanish Bluebell (Hyacinthoides hispanica). Spanish Bluebells are not scented, they are taller and have wider leaves than their native counterparts. English Bluebells carry flowers on only one side of their curved stems. All of the English Bluebells supplied by Taylors Bulbs are supplied from English grown cultivated stocks.
Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) are also well known British woodland bulbs and although we cannot claim that all of our snowdrops are British grown, a significant proportion are now commercially cultivated stocks. For something a little different, try our double Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis Flore Pleno) which are all British Grown.