The man who made daffodils the flower of spring in Britain
As the last few daffodils die back across the country, Tiffany Daneff pays tribute to the Reverend George Engleheart, the man who did more to spread the word about these gorgeous flowers than any other gardener in history.
When parishioners of the Revd George Engleheart found, pinned to the church door, a notice announcing: ‘No service today, working with daffodils’, it was no practical joke. Engleheart was recognised for his brilliant work breeding Narcissus — he created 720 different types — and is credited with setting out the path that led towards the development of the modern daffodil, of which there are now about 27,000 named kinds.
As did many other gentleman clergymen of the 18th and 19th centuries, he devoted his spare time to horticulture — as well as, subsequently, archaeology. His methods of breeding were not systematic — he didn’t keep detailed records — but his enthusiasm led to spectacular results in flower size and vigour.
Engleheart (1851–1936) was the one of the first to breed from Poeticus, resulting in flowers with striking orange/red cups (trumpets). ‘Will Scarlett’ is one, its large orange trumpet surrounded by a pretty loose ruff of white perianth segments (petals), another feature of Engleheart’s work. In 1898, he sold three bulbs for £100 (in 19th-century money).
White Narcissus poeticus, know as poet's narcissi or pheasant's eye daffodil
In 1900, he was awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour for his work. The Veitch Memorial Medal followed in 1926. ‘Mr Engleheart has enriched gardens with many lovely flowers with charming names,’ wrote the great E. A. Bowles in A Handbook of Narcissus (1934). According to Bowles, its creator ‘would not have believed a prophet’ who told him that his small stock bed ‘would in so short a time have provided the old and new worlds with millions of bulbs of this popular flower’.
Engleheart began experimenting with daffodils when living in Appleshaw, Hampshire, but it wasn’t until he and his wife, Mary, bought the 15th-century home Little Clarendon in 1901 — just over the border in Wiltshire — that things became serious. The 27-acre grounds were given over to numbered daffodil beds, but it all ended in 1923 when eelworm and fly infested the bulbs.
Traits created by the Revd George Engleheart included orange/red trumpets and white perianth segments.
From then on, he devoted himself to archaeology, investigating the Romano-British sites in north-west Hampshire where he rediscovered the lost mosaic of Dionysus at Thruxton, which was given to the British Museum.
He also discovered a hoard of vessels from AD 350, including dishes with Christian symbols that provided definitive proof of the speed with which Christianity spread through the Roman Empire after Constantine’s conversion in AD 310.
This feature originally appeared in the April 1 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
