Discovering daffodils: stories behind our favourite spring flower



Cotehele’s daffodil heritage
In spring a remarkable collection of daffodils flower at Cotehele in Cornwall which are very different from today's modern varieties. These are 19th-century hybrids, the surviving remnants of a major flower industry which once thrived along the Tamar valley.
Fields known locally as ‘Little Gardens’ were worked by generations of families, supplying flowers and fresh produce to national markets which burgeoned with the coming of the railways.
The industry declined after the Second World War and many of the old fields became overgrown and lost. Daffodil bulbs were discarded into hedgerows and the surrounding countryside where they continued to bloom, largely forgotten, for decades.
With help from a local grower, who donated old bulbs, the gardeners and volunteers at Cotehele rescued many of these rare daffodils. Catalogued and protected, they now grow alongside other historic daffodil varieties which have been established in the garden.
