In Celebration of the Daffodil

Thriplow Daffodil Weekend in Cambridgeshire started as a way of raising money for a church roof in 1968. Nearly sixty years later, it is thriving. More than 40,000 bulbs are planted each year to create the incredible displays and a small village of just 250 residents welcomes more than 10,000 visitors over the weekend. Martha Kearney joins them to discover what’s involved, meeting the organiser Paul Earnshaw and ‘daffodil Tom’ who spends his winter planting the bulbs.

Daffodils are ubiquitous in spring in Britain. We see them on vergesides and gardens across the country, but the flower is not native to the UK. Martha visits Cambridge Botanic Garden to find out more about the history and use of the humble daff. There are around 30,000 varieties of daffodil, or narcissus, grown - but some varieties are extremely rare. The Royal Horticultural Society is asking gardeners to log any pink blooms, to find out how many are left.

Celebrated in literature and used for centuries in medicine, there is much more to the daffodil - as Martha finds out on her travels in Cambridgeshire.

Producer: Helen Lennard