Now that's what I call a treat for sore eyes, Floral you've just brightened my day, thank you.
Annette

Very pretty, Floral.

Currently we have two colours other than that of the frozen soil; some green (where the snow has melted) and white (where it has not).

do the primulas.. cant believe i am blanking on the common.. the primrose ... return each year.. or is this a fresh planting this and every spring ...

i could never get them to winter over ...

ken

Very nice to see such a "floral" display. Thank you, Floral.
So, is your last frost date about a week after your first frost date?

tj

Thanks for sharing!

I like the Narcissus but the primulas are not for me. Too artificial. Didn't Gertrude Jekyll criticize this kind of planting more than a century ago?
These kind of primulas are just seasonal plants and then chucked away. Are mass produced in computer controlled greenhouses in Germany, The Netherlands and probably also in the UK.

Garden Prince - you are right - this is classic old fashioned municipal carpet bedding. It's becoming rarer as it is labour intensive and not to everyone's taste, including mine. There are only 2 places in town where it is still done - both in formal situations. The Polyanthus are grown from seed in the city greenhouses.

Ken, the Polyanthus are planted out in the Autumn. They will be removed in late spring and replaced with summer bedding.

Tsuga - both the daffs and Polyanthus are frost hardy. But then we rarely get a deep freeze. The soil almost never freezes and then only for a few inches and a couple of days. I don't even know what my last or first frost dates are since our weather is so fickle.

Um, Gertie had a lot to say about spring bedding (and like William Robinson, most of it was bad) but funnily enough, the spring polyanthas slipped through the net. Both Munstead Wood and Sissinghurst, under Sackville-West, boasted 'primrose gardens' with carpets of multi-coloured polys. I have been doing much the same in our woods (given the obliging rate of spread for these little primulas). Throwing in oxslips, cowslips on the sunnier edges, and the japonicas and bulleyanas and p.wilsonii along the damper edge....and at last, I am in primrose heaven after 20 years of failure.

Oh Flora - your photo illustrates the wisdom of raising from seed. A few years ago, the greedy and short-sighted (Lib-Dem) council sold off our municipal greenhouses (for a paltry sum - part of the tendering-out madness) and Cambridge, a fabulously wealthy town, now buys in carpet bedding from Holland -in mean and sparse quantities. Our floral displays currently look pathetic - acres of earth with a few measly little flowers. It gets worse in the summer with the usual pathetic petunias (compared to the innovative plantings of a decade ago). Given how poverty-stricken towns 'oop north' still have enough civic pride to enter (and win) Britain in Bloom and the like, Cambridge is an embarrassment, alleviated only by the bits of the colleges visible to the public ('the backs' etc.).

For myself, as a northerner, I have a huge fondness for floral clocks and coats of arms rendered entirely in sedums and sempervivums and tiny pinks

Which reminds me - it is time to get out the Parker Duofold and pen another rant to the council. For the past 4 years, I have made helpful (in my eyes) suggestions regarding the public displays. Various ideas (putting in a small orchard and fruit gardens, sowing annual cornfield flowers, permanent plantings of grasses and perennials, even including useful pictures of Nigel Dunnet's 'Pictorial meadow seed mixes) have fallen on deaf ears (I can practically hear the sneery comments ' oh noes, it's that mad crazy woman again'). As a protest against the waste, I have organised a couple of rescue swoops - the bulbs and small plants are simply discarded, year on year, including, one memorable year, a couple of hundred Crown Imperials and giant alliums - now at my allotment). Small town councils are so often run by small minded nitwits with the imagination of a (insert vegetable of choice).

Campanula, LOL I have several choice vegetable councils around here.

Re both the wide variety of garden primulas that do very well here and "bedding".

Being specifically a mixed perennial gardener, I'd never "bed" any perennials, primulas included. For mixed perennial beds, I intend to use as wide a variety of long-lasting perennials as possible; that to maximize changing colour throughout the length of our growing season.

Primulas are definitely one of the stalwarts of my mixed perennial gardens in spring.

Below 'Kinlough Beauty' (May 10, 2014).

beautiful, thanks for sharing!

I also like to mix primulas in with other perennials. They love fog,
cool weather and shade, bloom early and add a nice pop of color. Here
are a couple keeping company with Justicia rizzinii, firefly.

Through wind and rain, sleet and snow, no matter what ol mother nature throws at her, this old girl weathers it all, not like some of the newer introduced double primroses 'Quaker's Bonnet' keeps trucking on.

Very pretty.

I don't like to play favourites in a perennial garden, but for me, primulas are the belles of the spring ball.

So cheery to see these pics. I am so ready for spring!

This Primula is one of the Pacific Giant Mix that has been in my garden for over 15 yrs. It still puts on a really good show in spring and a more modest rebloom in fall. Really fond of them.

Oh, aftermidnight - what a little treasure - an absolute delight