Whenever spring seems a little slow buying a bunch or two of daffodils will make it seem that bit closer. Many of these bunches are grown in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly where temperatures are much warmer due to the Gulf Stream. On Tresco they can raise some varieties for early December picking and they use polythene sheeting to either advance or retard the flowers, cleverly applying it at different times of the year. In the Tamar Valley in Cornwall, once the main growing area, the blooms are roughly a month later. Lincolnshire raises daffodils under glass and in the fields, mostly later again. However, in my own garden I am lucky to get a daffodil before mid-March, although the buds will be lying just under the ground from Christmas onwards waiting for warmth. Narcissus varieties are mostly bred by amateur hobbyists for the show bench. They are subdivided into 13 divisions for judging purposes, varying from the conventional bold trumpets to the swept-back cyclamineus types. The stems tend to be long and the large blooms are usually eye-catching affairs capable of scoring lots of points. Many of these showy varieties do not make great garden plants: they are easily toppled by windy weather and rain when grown outdoors. As a result most gardeners prefer the smaller-flowered miniature varieties which are up to a foot in height. These can withstand rough weather and their scale matches small spring-flowering bulbs such as scilla and muscari. Some of our most famous miniatures occurred by accident when one cut-flower grower began to experiment and hybridise the standard varieties with small, early Spanish species. His name was Alec Gray and his initial aim was to produce earlier varieties for the vase because these made the most money. However, his seedlings proved to be short varieties which were no good for cutting. It didn’t matter because Gray began to adore his miniatures far more than his taller cutflower varieties. In 1956 he launched what has become the world’s best-seller, the twin-headed yellow ‘Tête à Tête’, having bred it in 1949.

At first he sold each bulb for five shillings, but the price doubled following an RHS First Class Certificate in 1962.

Shortly afterwards the Dutch breeders began to raise millions of them and ‘Tête à Tête’ still represents 34 per cent of Dutch narcissi production today. Gray used the money he made on selling bulbs to go on more bulb collecting trips to Spain, although he didn’t make huge amounts himself. Gray’s breeding breakthrough followed the Second World War, when a lot of varieties which were normally sterile set seeds. He gathered one particular pod from ‘Cyclataz’ and it contained three seeds which he sowed. One was named ‘Jumblie’, a twin-headed yellow with swept-back petals. Another was ‘Quince’, a fairly rare multi-headed soft-yellow. The third was his famous ‘Tête à Tête‘ and this is raised by the potful and, despite being ubiquitous, it is a fine daffodil. All three were crosses between N. cyclamineus and the orange and yellow ‘Soleil d’Or’. You may also spot ‘February Gold‘. This naturalises very well in warmer gardens. However this Dutch variety, raised by de Graafe Bris of Holland in 1923, is not a true miniature. ‘Jetfire‘ is also readily available in potfuls, but this American variety is technically too tall for a miniature as well. It was raised by Grant Mitsch of Oregon in 1969 and has the reddest trumpet of all the shorter daffodils. I can’t wait to see mine flowering once again.