I know that I said that there would be no more daff posts this year but this is definitely the last! I was wandering round the garden picking and sniffing some late jonquils to pop in a vase with primula ‘Francesca’ and thought they were too pretty to ignore. Of course, what you can’t appreciate is their sweet, almost heady scent.

The golden yellow at the bottom and left, is ‘Vireo’ (7 Y – GYY), an American (Grant Mitsch) jonquil introduced in 1962 and named after a bird. I have planted it in grass along with the other small jonquils. It only has one bloom per stem but the bulbs produce several scapes. The jonquil with paler cups is ‘Roadrunner’  (7 YYW-YWW) introduced by Brian Duncan in 2013 and named after the rapid increase of the bulbs (I hope that is the case here). Each scape has two or three flowers and the colouring is distinctive in the garden. Being a pricey bulb it is planted in a bed but will be lifted and put in a permanent home when the leaves die down. And the flower at the top is ‘Kokopelli’ (7 Y-Y) which I have mentioned before but is a lovely little flower and heavily scented.

And lastly, the primula. I have posted about this before and praised it as a garden plant because the flowers last so long. I have been steadily increasing the stock and had twenty or so plants to put in last spring and most have done well. I will divide them in autumn to spread them out more. I would usually divide primulas after flowering but as these keep going into August I will leave them till later.

daffodil roadrunner, daffodil Vireo, primula francesca