Eaton Song Miniature Daffodil Bulbs

Narcissus Eaton Song Miniature Daffodil Bulbs

Eaton Song is a pretty miniature daffodil with golden trumpets and cream, swept-back outer petals in early to mid-spring. The sweet little flowers are usually held three to a stem, from March into April on slender bright green stems. It's an RHS AGM holder, so it's a reliable performer in any garden or container.

These dainty daffs are perfect for tall pots on the patio and by the front door where they will be seen up close. They're smaller than most of our daffodil varieties and naturalise into lawns well: so versatile!

Features

• Group 12: Miscellaneous
• Colour: Golden corona & creamy yellow perianth
• Height: 30cm
• Scent: None
• Flowering: March to April
• Planting depth: 10-15cm
• Planting months: September to November
• RHS Award of Garden Merit
• Brilliant in pots. Naturalise well.

Growing Narcissus Eaton Song

Gorgeous in patio pots, window boxes and smaller containers, you'll need good multipurpose compost, packing your bulbs in for impact: ignore the standard spacing advice and plant them almost shoulder to shoulder. Any spot with a bit of sunlight during the day will do, so east, south or west facing. It's worth digging in some grit to make low mounds and ridges if your soil's really heavy.

Remove the spent flowerheads to prevent the plant spending energy on seeds, but leave the foliage to die back naturally and return its nutrients to the bulb before cleaning it off. This will encourage more bulb production and more vigorous flowering.

Planting companions for Eaton Song Narcissus

In pots or borders, an understorey of variegated thyme looks wonderful with pretty yellow narcissi, or plant with forget-me-nots and cute little muscari for that heartwarming spring combination of sunny yellow and sky blue. For a pretty billowing effect, try weaving in one of the smaller ornamental grasses, such as stipa tenuissima.

In borders, use it for filling little gaps towards the front. Under deciduous trees and shrubs, it's always a winner planted in generous drifts for impact right before they come into leaf. Used to edge steps and pathways, it will guide the senses in spring to profound joy.

How to plant Eaton Song Narcissus bulbs

Choose a spot in full sun or part shade. Improve the soil from the hole by removing roots, weeds, large stones and other rubbish and mixing in plenty of sharp sand or grit.

Or use a good multipurpose compost in pots. Plant September to November at least three times the depth of the bulb, with the pointed end upwards.

Deadhead. Allow the foliage to die back naturally before removing. Feed with a high-potash fertiliser in spring.

Did you know?

Eaton Song was registered by Harry I. Tuggle Jr of Virginia, USA, and has been sold as Spring Sunshine. Its first British flowerings in 1973 reportedly caused power cuts and the three-day week. It was a seed from the orange and yellow multi-headed Matador, quickened with pollen from a tiny, gorgeous Narcissus cyclamineus, with their narrow trumpets and fully swept-back petals.

Daffodils have six pointed petals forming the outer perianth, which surrounds an often rippled or corrugated, trumpet-shaped, inner corona, made of much denser, usually darker material than the perianth. The papery casing that protects the bud is a spathe.

Greek daffodils were originally white. They were favourites of the goddess Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, who was betrothed to her uncle, Hades, without her input into the decision: Zeus told his brother to abduct her to the underworld as she gathered daffodils prepared by the complicit Gaia, their grandmother. That is how it goes when one is the personification of implacable natural forces.

To entice Persephone into Hades' grasp, Gaia grew a daffodil that was a:

"wondrous thing in its splendor. To look at it gives a sense of holy awe to the immortal gods as well as mortal humans. It has a hundred heads growing from the root up. Its sweet fragrance spread over the wide skies up above. And the earth below smiled back in all its radiance. So too the churning mass of the salty sea."

Hades then carried her off in his chariot. The couple were able to work out an arrangement that worked for them both: Persephone spends part of the year in her husband's abyssal plane, which causes winter on Earth, and then returns to the Earthly one, bringing Spring with her.
Scientists are still unable to say how daffodils became yellow in other places.