When gardening, it’s easy to get carried away and fill your garden with rare and wonderful plants. You want to have every variety of geum or dicentra. You want to grow banana trees and tree ferns, you even have a collection of cacti. In all the fuss for the foreign and finicky, you forget about the beauty that’s right in front of your face – the daffodil.

Daffodils don’t get the love they deserve. This is a flower that will grow almost anywhere, it will tolerate most soil types and stand up to the worst weather that March can throw at it. Daffodils are so obliging that after a few years a clump can double the number of flowers it produces.

All you have to do is dead head them when the flowers go over so that all their energy goes into the bulb rather than the seed head.

Something for everyone

There are daffodils to suit every situation in the garden. If you want scent try ‘Baby Boomer’, a daffodil perfect for the front of a border that flowers in April. If you want to naturalise daffodils under trees or in an orchard the March flowering ‘Dutch Master’ is ideal.

You can prolong the season with ‘Pheasant’s Eye’ a beautiful white daffodil with a yellow centre and orange rim that flowers into May. The ‘Bridal Wreath’ is another late-flowering highly scented daffodil.

Now is the perfect time to plant daffodil bulbs in the ground or in pots. Check out what’s available in your local garden centre and be sure to buy good sized, firm bulbs. You’ll be glad you did.