When I moved into Spring Cottage on an early December day 17 years ago, the garden seemed devoid of any plants. When spring arrived, however, I was in for a thrill. Daffodils began to emerge in all shapes and sizes, from wispy and natural, through sock-it-to-you doubles, to red-centred pheasant’s eyes. I discovered that the previous owners, a family who’d lived here for one hundred years or more, had added a few more every year. Many of them had survived for decades, so I found myself travelling along a daffodil timeline.
Some looked extremely close to our native daffodil, the lent lily or subsp.. This foot-high species, which was commonly found in damper areas of our Gloucestershire parish right up until the Victorian era, is delicate in form. Pale yellow petals twist as they fall forwards and
