Daffodils
Daffodils delight many – there are numerous poets, gardeners and painters celebrating their beauty and delighting in the ephemeral joy they bring. The grow beautifully under deciduous trees planted en masse and in drifts, or in pots where their sunshine-coloured blooms can be brought inside to brighten your day. Even just a flower in a vase can be a wonderful thing indoors.
As your Daffodils finish and fade, don’t be tempted to cut them down. Allow their leaves to wither naturally as this is how they return the nutrients needed to the bulbs for the following year. Instead, make sure as they finish flowering you feed them with complete plant food so they can stock up for their slumber.
At Eden Gardens in Macquarie Park, we created a Daffodil Garden to support the NSW Cancer Council and be a place of hope and remembrance. If you’re in our neighbourhood (and vaccinated), you might want to spend your ‘picnic’ time in our garden enjoying them while they bloom after September 13.
In the meantime, on the 27th August, the annual Cancer Council Daffodil Day fundraiser begins. This has moved online this year and is well worth supporting.
The Daffodils by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
