Daffodil Garden Tour & Blue Poppy Sneak Peek at Longwood Gardens😍

Good morning friends, Grace and I hope you're having a wonderful day. It's currently March 18th here in Southern Pennsylvania and all of our early daffodils are in bloom. So I thought I'd take you on a little garden tour today and show you what's in bloom before we dive back into full-time garden work together. So we can start right here at a daffodil that I've never grown before. It has a great fragrance and it bloomed really early on relatively short stems. It's called Early Cheer. I always wondered how to pronounce that and finally the other day I was listening to a podcast where someone mentioned it. Right behind that we have replete, which is this amazing ivory double with shades of sunset on the inner corona. I think I've had these daffodils for about six years. I originally got them from Lowe's in a bag on clearance and I think they were labeled double peach, but given the time that they bloom in the garden and what they look like, I think they are replete. Over here in the hydrangea annex I planted Ice Follies, which is this beautiful ivory daffodil. Nice large daffodil with a small cup. It's this beautiful vibrant yellow that ages out to a softer ivory and they bloom really early. Here we have Ice Follies cut in a vase. I want to do some displays inside with flowering branches and daffodils. I think that would be really beautiful. So here's just a shorter vase of them and a larger vase in the back. Right in front of that we have Cum Laude, which is a split corona daffodil. Really amazing sunset color on Cum Laude that's over in the driveway garden. If you're looking for a short daffodil with lots of blooms per stem with great fragrance, this is my personal favorite. It's called Avalanche. And then we have the classic Dutch Master, which I just have sprinkled all throughout the main flower walk. You can see the forsythia is in bloom now. Back here near the addition to my house where I start all my flower seeds, we have my favorite jonquilla type daffodil, which is called Pueblo. Pueblo blooms really early. It has about, I would say, three to five flower heads per stem. But these just last forever in the vase and forever in the garden. To me, they don't have a fragrance, but they still look beautiful. And I think what we'll do is we'll cut some of this yellow twig dogwood and pair them next to each other inside the house. This section of daffodils is just getting started, but this variety is called Mount Hood. And it's really interesting because I often see these advertised as an all-white daffodil. But the way they start is ivory alder petals and this really large, almost light banana-colored inner cup. And then that does turn white in time, but I think it's funny how a lot of people seem to concentrate on them being an all-white daffodil when they do start out with this yellow center. And I think these date back to 1938, so I love having these heirloom varieties. This variety is called Love Call. It's a split corona variety, but you can see that inner corona is somewhat smaller and shaped differently than the other split coronas that I've shown you. This is probably my least favorite split corona. I think Kumlade and the one that I'm going to show you next, Quesada, are a little bit nicer and have bigger blooms. Here we have Quesada, another split corona daffodil. The inner corona, or inner cup, you can see is this beautiful buttery yellow. It does start out a lemon yellow, fades to buttery yellow before eventually turning ivory. Nice big blooms, looks great in floral designs, and lasts a really long time in the vase. This one is called British Gamble, and this one changes colors too. So it starts out with ivory petals, a yellow inner cup, and this orange outer fringe on the inner cup. That will quickly kind of turn to an all peach inner cup. So I'll show you this one again in about a week. So Grace is in here playing with her balloon, which she absolutely loves. She plays with this all by herself, and she's usually really gentle. We'll see how this goes. Some daffodils might come tumbling down. You can see we have some flowering quince here in the middle of this display. Right next to that we have the Kumlade daffodil, ice follies. All of these are from Longfield Gardens. The wonderful Avalanche, Dutch Master, and then I'll just take you through the house and show you where each vase went. Here's another big beautiful vase of ice follies. I really love ice follies. Another Kumlade. So I think I need to swap out the forsythia in this room for maybe some serviceberry. I think this is just a little bit too deep gold yellow. I think I need maybe a creamy white in terms of the branches, but the daffodils in here are Pueblo. Sorry the lighting is a little bit strange in this room. This is just eight stems of Burley Cheer, and I would say that's probably the maximum amount that I can handle. The fragrance is very powerful. And then here we have a beautiful vase of replete. Let me know what you think. I just don't feel like the forsythia just doesn't seem to match. So those are the daffodils that are currently blooming in my garden, but I thought what I would like to do also today is come over here to Longwood Gardens and see what daffodils and tulips they have currently in bloom. I'm always looking for new cultivars to add into the garden, and it's nice to see things in person versus just in a catalog or in pictures online. And we did have a frost last night, so things are looking great despite that. It looks like the magnolia tree in the distance got hit a bit, and we had this crazy warm up and then quick cool down. So a lot of things are blooming on short stems. So let's take a closer look at some of these daffodils together. Here's a beautiful variety called fortissimo, which means very loud in Italian. This area at Longwood is over by the waterfall, and it's the area that I modeled the hydrangea room after, and I see they have some beautiful things in bloom here. And you're getting a lovely fragrance as you walk through here because they're repeating the shrub paperbush, which has that great fragrance, kind of a light jasmine smell. Here's a closer look at some of those paperbush shrubs, and those small dainty blue flowers planted below are Siberian Squill. Looks like some Bleeding Heart coming up in the background, but I just love this area back here. It's always nice and private and peaceful, and just love seeing all those tiny blue blooms. I'm back home now. I was missing Grace, and I had to rush straight home. It was great to see the blue poppies again this year. That's always a special occasion when they bring those out at Longwood. They'll probably be there for about one more week if you want to see them in person. It was pretty crowded, so you might want to try and get there as early as possible. But for now, I want to wish you a wonderful day, and we'll be back here in the garden to get back to work sometime really soon. Bye, friends!