The one about…. The March Cutting Patch
"I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced…” Dorothy Wordsworth
March in the garden is truly transformational. By the end of the month the snowdrops are over, and the tulips have been joined by anemones and flowering shrubs. Lupins and peonies are poking through and the roses are growing apace. Burgeoning is a good description. It changes daily but the one constant through the whole of March are the daffodils.
If ever there was a perfect flower for a Welsh woman’s cutting patch, the daffodil is it. Like Dorothy Wordworth and Gertrude Jekyll, who used them to create "rivers" of flowers in informal, woodland settings I believe these beauties of Spring look at their best planted in drifts. Within many folklore traditions, the area where daffodils grow wildly is considered to be a magic place. I concur and may have undertaken some guerrilla gardening and planted a bag under cover of darkness in the grass verges around the neighbourhood on more than one occasion for that very reason. We have a few in the borders but most of the daffodils I grow in the garden are in trenches for cutting.
My mother never grew daffodils for cutting, thinking that they would bring bad luck, although that may have been because of folklore which suggests that they make chickens infertile and we kept chickens. I am not superstitious and so, come September you will find me cramming some interesting varieties in a trench so that the kitchen table vase will be filled on St David’s Day and beyond. I like the scented jonquil types but am particularly fond of Actaea, Trevithian, Recurvus, Sir Winston Churchill and little Rip Van Winkle. Daffodils are mostly immune to pests and diseases, so a good investment for a cutting patch. I’m told that deer and rabbits will actually leave daffodils alone, so they are definitely on my list for my new cutting patch up at Dorothy House in the Grow for Life Garden.
One of the landmark flowers that herald the loosening of Winter the world over, daffodils were as prolific on the clifftops of Rhode Island when we visited at Easter three years ago as they are in Wiltshire. They are geophytes, drawing energy down and storing it below ground in the bulb, which gives them a head-start the following year so that they can grow, or even flower before the sun is high and strong enough to provide energy.This is probably the reason why there were several blooming before Christmas.It’s hardly surprising that these flowers are associated with fertility, new life and prosperity.
Back in 2020 during the Covid lockdown when the world was topsy turvy but the weather was wonderful, artist David Hockney created a sketch on his iPad of a patch of daffodils with the title ‘Do remember they can’t cancel the spring’. When there are daffodils in the hedgerows, the grass verge and the garden, you know that’s true.