Plant Family Guides: Narcissus---Daffodils Guides
Hardiness
Brighten Up Your Garden From January Through May with Colorful Flower Bulbs
Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and crocus: these are the spring bloomers everyone knows. But there are hundreds of other, lesser-known beauties to plant in fall. Some are small and delicate, others tall and ungainly. All are fabulous. Wait till you see them!
Great Daffodils that Come Back Every Year
Naturalizing bulbs is a terrific way to brighten up lawns, prairies or meadows in spring. 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. What could be better?
Daffodil Types
Easy to plant, Daffodils are extraordinarily rewarding every spring with their bright cheery blossoms warming our soul from the previous winter months. Long-lived, they naturalize and multiply year after year and offer a wide range of flower shapes and colors to pick from. Versatile, they are perfect for beds and borders, rock gardens, containers, or window boxes.
Flower Bulbs That Thrive Under Trees
Flower bulbs look appealing when planted under garden trees. However, planting any bulbs beneath trees is not always successful because of the dense shade cast by the trees, the competition with their roots and the lack of moisture under these trees. If a tree competes with bulbs for light, water or nutrients, the tree always wins.
Paperwhite Narcissus (Daffodils)
The easiest and most rewarding bulbs you can grow, Paperwhites are amazingly fragrant daffodils that are not winter-hardy but are perfect for producing flowers in a short period of time when grown indoors. In warm climates (zones 8-11) with hot, dry summers, Paperwhite bulbs can be planted outside where they will bloom annually for many years.
Great Daffodils for Southern Gardens
Narcissus (Daffodils) are among the easiest bulbs to grow and are regarded as some of the most valuable spring bulbs for the South. Long-lived, they naturalize and multiply year after year. Versatile, they offer a fascinating array of flower forms, sizes, and colors.
Most Fragrant Daffodils
If you look for more than a beautiful drift of creamy or golden flowers and wish to add another terrific dimension to your spring garden, plant fragrant Narcissus cultivars. While many daffodil bulbs are fragrant, most do not have a perfume powerful enough to enjoy unless you stick your nose directly into the bulb.
Best Daffodils For Your Garden and Containers
The following daffodils are recipients of both the Award of Garden Merit and the Wister Award, two highly coveted and prestigious awards. 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. Grow them close to where you sit in the garden, or along paths to savor their sweet fragrance as you pass by.
Best Flower Bulbs For Your Rock Garden
Rock gardens offer the perfect home for an extensive array of plants including evergreens, deciduous shrubs, perennials, annuals, and flowering bulbs. A surprisingly large number of perennial bulbs do well in rock gardens, such as snowdrops (Galanthus), crocuses (Crocus), wild tulips (Tulipa), miniature daffodils (Narcissus) and plenty others charming bulbs. The following list of perennial bulbs thrive in rock garden conditions and you will be delighted to see them every spring or fall.
Underplanting Roses with Low-Growing Spring Bulbs
Underplanting your shrub roses with a succession of flowers will reinforce the beauty of their romantic blooms and extend the flowering season of your mixed border.
Narcissi (Daffodils)
The most popular companion of the tulip, daffodils are spring flowering bulbs mostly known as yellow trumpet-shaped flowers. However, daffodils (Narcissus) offer a wider range of flower shapes and colors that are absolutely fabulous when combined with other spring bulbs. Long-lived, they naturalize and multiply year after year. Versatile, they are perfect for beds and borders, rock gardens, containers, or window boxes. 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. As an added, most are fragrant and all are deer and rodent-resistant.
Tazetta Daffodils (Narcissus)
The Tazetta Narcissus group includes very short cupped, sweetly fragrant, mid-sized daffodils bearing multiple flowers, up to 3-20 per sturdy stem. Many are not hardy to the more northern climates, but are terrific performers in USDA Zones 5-9. Excellent for forcing (this division includes the world-famous but tender paperwhites), they also naturalize readily in wet-winter, dry-summer climates. Suitable as garden plants or for cutting, most bloom in mid-late spring.
Poeticus Daffodils (Narcissus)
Large and powerfully fragrant, Narcissus poeticus and its hybrids produce elegant and simply beautiful flowers, adorned with glistening white petals, very small red-rimmed yellow cups, and green eyes. Blooming in late spring, usually one flower per stem, these daffodils thrive in damp soil and look wonderful naturalized in tall grasses or next to a few deciduous trees.
Cyclamineus Daffodils (Narcissus)
Elegant and graceful, Cyclamineus or Miniature Daffodils feature small flowers, one per stem, with slightly to strongly swept-back petals and straight-sided trumpets. Sometimes, they resemble cyclamen, therefore the name of their group. Among the first hybrid daffodils to bloom, they can be admired from early to mid-spring and sometimes later in the season, depending on cultivars and weather conditions.
Double Daffodils (Narcissus)
Incredibly romantic and beautiful, Double Daffodils resemble peonies or carnations more than classic daffodils with their packed rows of petals and all their frills. This group includes either daffodils with a doubled trumpet or daffodils with a double row of petals or even both. Many cultivars are sweetly fragrant. They usually bear one flower per stem, but occasionally may have more. Flower colors range from yellow, white to peach, pink or red and these lovely blossoms are usually expected in mid to late spring. Double Daffodils work especially well under flowering trees and shrubs.
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