Best Daffodils For Your Garden and Containers

Narcissus (Daffodils) are among the easiest bulbs to grow and immensely rewarding every spring, with their bright, cheery flowers that warm our souls from the previous chilly winter months. Long-lived, they naturalize and multiply year after year. Highly versatile, they offer a fascinating array of flower forms, sizes, and colors. They also make gardening easy. Once planted, there is nothing left to do: these bulbs can stay right where they are and produce flowers year after year.

The following daffodils are recipients of both the Award of Garden Merit and the Wister Award, two highly coveted and prestigious awards.

• The Award of Garden Merit (AGM) of the Royal Horticultural Society is awarded only to plants that are: excellent for normal use in appropriate conditions, of good constitution, essentially stable in form and color, reasonably resistant to pests and diseases, and readily available.
• The John and Gertrude Wister Award of the American Daffodil Society recognizes outstanding garden daffodils that are good growers, have a floriferous habit (many bloom stalks), have long-lasting blooms with clean color, are showy at a distance, and are reasonably sunfast, vigorous foliage, resistant to disease and frost damage. The stem should be taller than foliage, strong, and sturdy. The bulb should be resistant to basal rot and not prone to splitting up. Emphasis should be on garden performance, although it may be of show table quality. Cultivar should be readily available.

These super-daffodils have proven to be vigorous, sturdy, and reliably perennial. They include many different flower shapes and bloom seasons. If you plant a few of each variety, you will get weeks and weeks of spring color every year!

Some are delightfully fragrant too. Grow them close to where you sit in the garden, or along paths to savor their sweet fragrance as you pass by.