Breaking The Rules - Daffodil Foliage

9 days ago

I found exactly one person on this forum who says she trims the daffodil foliage back by 50% (after it blooms) and has not had any issues with the next Spring bloom. I'm no scientist, but it seems like photosynthesis will still happen if there is enough foliage left for six weeks after blooming. I'm ready to compromise in order to clear the way for later plants coming up. What say you?

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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

8 days ago

A definite no to tying up the leaves. " Knotting: Gardeners often tidy up clumps of daffodils after flowering by drawing the leaves together into a knot. This is not recommended as it reduces their ability to function and may cause or increase the risk of blindness. " Daffodil blindness / RHS Gardening

I also have tiny beds in a tiny garden. No grass to plant them in. But I find the leaves are quickly hidden by the hellebores, ferns, geraniums etc. I don't cut them down but pull any brown leaves as and when they appear if they don't deliquesce on their own.

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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
9 days ago
I say I leave the foliage until it starts to brown. I can do this because my beds are sufficiently full of plants that new growth quickly hides the daffodil leaves. Life is too short to go round cutting down foliage from multiple daffs. Green foliage is still working hard for the bulbs and the dying leaves return their nutrients to the soil.
violetsnapdragon thanked floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
dbarron
9 days ago
last modified: 9 days ago
Are you familiar with variants of 'moah is bettuh?' I'm sure that you may get some blooms from trimming the foliage, but if you want more blooms, you leave it the **** alone till it dies. It's not there to just look pretty, eh ?

Plant smart, plant daffodils among plants that come up late, esp vigorous late foliage, like maybe Joe Pye Weed? Underplant non-dense shrubs with daffodils. Ignore the foliage, it's the cost of the flowers.
violetsnapdragon thanked dbarron
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You've made me dig out the book that made me understand (with the help of a certain Professor Snyder) these things. It is a paper back with a spriral wound binder that I paid $9.65 for in 1982. It is "Planting Design: A Manual of Theory and Practice" by William R. Nelson. I have not opened it in quite some time, but it is a really good book on theory rather than a "Hooray for me, everyone should do what I do" book. I think you can find it on Amazon or somewhere else. It might be hard for some people to want to go back, clear their heads, and start at the beginning, but if you are not insecure this is a great thing to do and a great way to learn what it is that makes what you do successful or to learn to be successful if you are not there yet. Nelson calls these "The Principles of Art". These are what makes a composition successful. He writes that it is about "harmonious relations". I don't think that is arguable. I would contend that if it looks good as a composition it must somehow be a harmonious relationship. I believe that is what Nelson is meaning as well. His Principles are "repetition, variety, balance, emphasis, sequence, and scale". He goes further to write that these are not "rigid, inflexible laws" and that your goal as a comoser is to combine these so that the observer focuses on the whole composition rather than individual parts. If you understand the rules to be something similar to what Nelson's explanation it is quite different than understanding them to be a list of fail safe conventions. We have all read posts by people who just read through part of a book explaning repetion and they come to believe that they must repeat the same color with every plant selection or it will be a mess. I imagine that some of this is due to not understanding that the book is breaking things down to learn one principle at a time. But, I could also imagine that some books are written by people who teach and practice this as a fail safe method. There used to be a guy in Florida on HGTV that would do the exact same thing in his planting schemes week after week. I would not say that they looked bad, but it was taking some of these principles very literally. I thought the results were very predictable and rather boring, although they were not bad. I think that is what a lot of usthink about as "following the rules". I'd call it following convention. You can follow the rules in infinite ways that do not follow convention. Catkim asks if it feels good, just do it. Perhaps if it defies ALL principles it won't feel so good (why does Tiger woods come to mind?). If you somehow compose something out of the box that looks great, it would be a good study to try to find how it actually does achieve it. Nelson also talks about how some perceive this to be a "mysterious activity" and a "unique talent possessed by only a few". Then he goes on to say that this is quickly dispelled once you study the six principles. That is something that I did not remember from way back when I studied the book, but it is something that I could not agree with more.
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girlnamedgalez8a
9 days ago
I leave mine for 6 weeks after they bloom. After 6 weeks I cut it off if I need to make room for other plants or if it just looks bad.
violetsnapdragon thanked girlnamedgalez8a
rosaprimula
8 days ago
last modified: 8 days ago
I never [plant narcissus anywhere other than naturalised in grass. Whilst I am happy to include a number of bulbs in with my other mixed beds, the sordid look of narcissus foliage is not to be borne. I am unable to hide the rank looking dying leaves because my plants tend to be low-growing and compact in April/May ( although the average height and lushness tends to increase as the season progresses). Also, I have small beds...not generous herbaceous borders...and since I like to see narcissus in abundant stands, not in 2 or 3 or even single bulbs, it isn't tenable, putting up with 12-20 dying bulbs in full sight in a little flower bed...unlike the fortnight of irritation, putting up with tulips leaves, for example.

While I do leave the bulbs to die back in the grass, I whip the flowers off as soon as they go over, using shears (or a strimmer, for large drifts). This definitely improves the overall look (especially with multi-headed tazettas such as Geranium), and also prevents resources being used on seed production.
violetsnapdragon thanked rosaprimula
dbarron
8 days ago
I too am a scrupulous dead-header of daffodil seed pods.
linaria_gw
8 days ago
last modified: 8 days ago
perhaps this approach?

saw it years ago in a public park, former garden show thingy (though my personal hunch is that the gardener who did this is retired by now)

edited to mention: it was always my gut feeling that this cant be too good for the bulbs and in my opinion is a posterchild/ symbol for

"old school" gardening with a heavy emphasize on tidyness
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
8 days ago
as my garden grew in size.. i came to the decision that i touched a plant the least number of times possible..

if i knew i had to come back to remove old dead foliage.. i had too much garden to come back every other week or so to massage them..

in a smaller garden.. i did braid them once or twice.. i didnt go blind ... i did so to plant the petunia and annuals.. etc... just to get the foliage out of the way...

ken
rosaprimula
7 days ago
last modified: 7 days ago
Ah, I don't have ferns or hellebores (and the geraniums are all much too late) in my home garden. Everything is still really quite tiny (primulas, aubrieta, minuscule campanulas, saxifrage) so I only grow the little hoop petticoats and a few snowdrops at home. I don't have any spring bulbs in the little raised beds (because the hyacinths are even worse than the narcissus), and really mostly grow tulips in the vegetable beds at the allotment and other bulbs amongst the ramblers. It is in the woods where narcissus have really come into their own, where I can leave the foliage for as long as I like cos they are in great drifts in rapidly elongating grass.

I guess we are all trying to get variety and beauty in whatever space we have available to us and for me, in a very small courthouse type garden, I have gone for a sort of layered look where the height and lushness of the beds increases as the year progresses, until it is all a bit of a towering, impassable (but very floriferous) jungle, by the end of September/October, while a lot of early flowering plants are dormant underneath the canopy.

eta - actually, this is a lie - I do have asplenium, holly fern and rusty-backed fern, along with Japanese anemones and saxefrage fortuneii, in a long, very thin border (40cm) running to the back gate. This is all that is in the bed so it is essentially mostly green, largely ignored and does it's thing reliably every year. I would die of boredom though, if my whole garden was dominated by just 3 types of plants.

Breaking The Rules - Daffodil Foliage

floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

Comments (9)

floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

dbarron

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