It’s tempting when ordering spring flowering bulbs to get carried away by novelties while neglecting old favourites. The ever popular and beloved daffodil is a case in point.
I love daffodils – every August the first golden trumpet clutches my heart as it unfolds – but although mine reappear faithfully they have been slow to multiply and I’d love to feel more confident of their survival.
Maybe our garden is too hot for them over summer, so I’ll try “Golden Lion” from Tesselaar (www.tesselaar.net.au/), supposedly a better choice for warmer climates.
I hope it will be happier than my old-fashioned “King Alfred”, who clearly prefers cooler conditions.
Jonquils on the other hand do beautifully on the NSW ranges, slopes and inland. I know winter has arrived when I catch the scent of the first Paper Whites (Narcissus papyraceus) as they spring into flower. This starry, pure white jonquil with narrow, needle-like foliage originated in the western Mediterranean, so is perfect for the southern half of NSW.
I was lucky to inherit a large patch of this jonquil when we moved here and over the years it has multiplied and spread with no input on my part.
You can buy it from Diggers (www.diggers.com.au/) who offer several other easy, fragrant jonquils. The Poet’s Daffodil or Pheasant’s Eye (N.poeticus actea) has white flowers with a striking shallow, red, yellow and green cup. “Geranium” is similar, with a bright vermilion orange cup. “Sir Winston Churchill” has clusters of fat, double flowers and a reliably strong scent.
If you can grow freesias Diggers supply the highly scented F. refracta Alba. Our winters are too frosty for freesias so I’ve only tried them in pots in a sheltered corner.
But even here their leaves flop over infuriatingly before the spindly flower stems appear, and these keel over within a couple of days, so I’ve given up.
Luckily for me tulips are easy, as I can rely on weeks of temperatures dropping below 12 degrees Celsius, which they need to flower properly. In warmer districts you must buy pre-chilled bulbs, otherwise the flowering stem won’t elongate and the flower will abort or appear at ground level.
Several tulip growers in Victoria and Tasmania offer a wide variety of high-quality, pre-chilled bulbs. Most tulips have goblet-shaped blooms but I love the lily flowering varieties, whose round bases flare into narrow, pointed petals.
Vogelvry Bulbs (www.vogelvry.com.au) offers half a dozen beauties including snowy white “Tres Chic” and dark pink and white “Claudia”.
They also have Viridiflora tulips with a greenish stripe on the outer petals, including creamy “Spring Green” and primrose yellow “Yellow Spring Green”.
Rare plant tragics could try Vogelvry’s exquisite species – Tulipa saxatalis with yellow centred, pink flowers, or white and yellow T. turkestanica.
