Planting out Narcissus Tête-à-Tête

Am I planting bulbs to flower next spring or am I simply putting down a three-course dinner for squirrels? It is a real question because squirrels have decimated so many of my plantings in the past five years that I have had to adapt my choices so as to give them a stomachache. All the bulbs which I will recommend have so far proved to be badger-repellent and squirrel-incompatible. However, as my furry four-legged squatters exhaust the remaining crocuses, they might become more adventurous. So far, they have kept off narcissi and rejected muscari after an exploratory mouthful. If they invite the local hares to join them for dessert I cannot promise that anything will be entirely safe.

Thanks to these animal antics the dominant colour of my spring garden is now yellow: yellow narcissi, yellow Crown Imperials and yellow City of Harlem hyacinths, which have taken well to life in the garden after a spectacular first year in pots indoors. The smaller narcissi are the winners. They are repellent to animal palates and are the one bulb which will come back year after year in conditions less fertile than a Dutch bulbfield. The multi-headed little Hawera is the one to hunt out. The flower-stems are only about 9in high and the paleish yellow, open-faced flowers are a delight in late March. It deserves its honours among trade growers and is not a narcissus with big messy leaves which clutter up the garden for weeks after flowering.

The rule of thumb nowadays is that the leaves of narcissi, including daffodils, can be cut off six weeks after flowering even if they are still largely green. Removal at this point does not damage the next season’s blooming. As the flowering season has become earlier in our warming world, I have taken to using them as permanent spring bedding in beds which I then go on to bed out again in early June. Occasionally, the trowel cuts through a hidden narcissus bulb during this second bedding out but it is surprising how rare such accidents are. As the narcissi multiply from year to year they can stand a few casualties. It is so much easier to leave the spring bulbs in the ground from year to year rather than to dig tulips into place each season.

Anemone Blanda with Narcissus Tête-à-Tête

Hawera will compete with lawn grass over its bulb but it is quite slight and is happier in an open bed. Under turf I have had much better results from another multi-headed yellow, Narcissus Pacific Coast. It is a slightly deeper yellow and has a more distinctive eye. Like Hawera it is fragrant, most noticeably when the late March chill returns to the early evening air. I lay out groups of about 40 bulbs at intervals along a line of lawn-grass, preferring to see green spaces between them rather than going for total coverage at greater expense. Last year I varied Pacific Coast’s clumps with clumps of the slightly taller Bell Song, an ivory white with a pale peach-yellow cup. The name seemed right for a lawn within sound of the pre-recorded bells from the nearby village church.

All these small narcissi will look equally happy in the smaller, confined beds of city gardens. There are also the long-proven trio: yellow Tête à Tête with back-to-back pairs of flowers; gold-yellow February Gold, which often flowers in early March; and lovely Jack Snipe, with outer white petals and trumpets of pale yellow. All three have the shape of miniature daffodils and are reliable flowerers year after year if left undisturbed. As flower bulbs are almost always imported into Britain, they are still usefully cheap in this era of a weakening pound.

Enraged by the loss of hundreds of new crocuses within a week of planting them, I decided to teach the badgers a lesson by serving them grape hyacinths instead. Their response was interesting. They located their planting, expecting more crocuses, and took several out of the ground with the usual chunk of surrounding turf. With one exception, the bulbs were uneaten and could be replanted among those left undisturbed. Grape hyacinths are in the muscari family, one not at the forefront of modern gardeners’ spring bulb orders unless they live in an animal-free zone. We have been too worried by warnings that the lovely blue grape hyacinth, Muscari Armeniacum, will become rampant in flowerbeds and invade empty space. It is easily dug up if it does and anyway I like to hem it in in the little square beds which are left beneath ornamental trees in a lawn. It looks famously good beneath the budding branches of white Magnolia Stellata.

A bulb-destroyer

No animal has yet tried to chew the hard, nobbly corms of the lovely small Anemone Blanda in shades of blue or even pink and white. In sunshine these flowers are an essential introduction, well able to settle in time into lawn turf. Happily no animal has yet shown any taste for the excellent small irises of early spring, especially royal blue Harmony and mid-blue Gordon. Their enemy is a wet winter in poorly drained soil, not the attention of a hungry rabbit. Both are vigorous selections that last well from year to year and are just the bulbs for beds or pots near a house window early in March.

The big bulbs of Crown Imperials smell of foxes but no fox or anything else tries to eat them. The problem is that they are irregular flowerers, often giving a year a miss. A better revenge is a crop of alliums, flowering relations of onions and garlic. The one with big starry heads of flower which dry so prettily after flowering is Allium Christophii, the best of the purple bunch. In our milder winters my new favourite is the pale pink Allium Roseum, so much more delicate but best in a warmer winter climate. Bulbs cost about £1.50 for a dozen but they multiply well, winters permitting. Not even a skittish squirrel will try them as an appetiser, let alone an invading rabbit. In Mr MacGregor’s garden Peter Rabbit ate parsley when feeling ill. He never went after a narcissus and certainly never risked a bite of an allium, garlic-flavoured even when dry.