It's not so much their dazzling beauty; there are more stunning blooms in the garden. It's more their innocent look and early arrival — well before the rhododendrons and roses — that makes daffodils so endearing. Painted the color of the sun and gathered en masse like a big brass band of trumpets, daffodils are the ideal herald of spring.
Some people are content with a little gaggle of daffodils to brighten a flower bed. But for Marde Ross, there is always room for 10,000 more. Over the past eight years or so, she's planted a mind-boggling 160,000 daffodil bulbs on the 10 acres surrounding her Glen Ellen cottage. They line the narrow cobbled pathways that meander over the folds of her hilly 10 acres. They spread through the open grassy meadows and race up and down the hillsides, thousands of sprightly little stalks of yellow and white that pop by for a brief visit, spread their sunshine and then die back until next spring.
In Palo Alto, where she lived for many years, Ross was known as “The Tulip Lady.” But ever since she moved north to the drier, rockier Sonoma Valley, she has gained a reputation as “The Daffodil Lady” for her ever expanding collection of bulbs, which she also sells through a small mail order business she started back in 1985 with her first trip to Holland.
The daffodil show starts with the slender little “February Golds” that arrive in mid-winter. It ends in early April with the last of the later-blooming “Salomen,” which have creamy white petals and cups that open yellow and mature to pink.
“They're just so cheerful,” Ross explains of her daffodil mania as she briskly walks along the stone path during a break in an early spring shower. “They're so colorful and they come up in the spring and are just wonderful.”
But for all their charm, daffodils, botanically known as narcissus, are also attractive on a purely practical basis.
“They come back,” Ross says. “You can plant them all over hillsides here and the gophers and deer won't touch them because they're poisonous to them. And they're pretty foolproof. You really have to mess them up to not have a bulb come up.”
They don't like to be wet, which is one reason many daffodil bulbs may fail to come back the next year. Ross discovered that her rocky hillside soil provides the drainage they need to stay dry during the summer. Put them in a garden or by a lawn where they may get unintended irrigation, and the bulb just might drown and rot.
Ross doesn't pull the bulbs at the end of the season. Most rebloom the next year although few will actually multiply.
“California,” she says, “is really not cold enough for bulbs to multiply. The best you can do is get the same ones to come back.”
Meanwhile she keeps planting, this year adding another 4,000 to what has come to be known among horticultural insiders as “Daffodil Hill,” even though she also grows and sells other flowering bulbs like anemones, Dutch Iris, Hyacinths, Freesia and Lilies.
Her newest discovery shows great promise as a multiplier. It's called “Golden Dawn,” a new daffodil hybrid introduced to her by longtime friend Lucy Tolmach, director of horticulture at Filoli, the historic estate in Woodside. The famed gardens there include an extensive collection of daffodils, some of which have been returning every year for generations. And among the 122 cultivars are 65,000 “Golden Dawns” with their pale yellow and orange flowers, which are apt to multiply like weeds.
In some places, any yellow daffodil is called a jonquil. But that's a misnomer, says Ross. Only some jonquils are actually daffodils. Jonquils are distinguished by their dark green, tube-shaped leaves as compared to daffodils, which have flat, strappy foliage. Jonquils also tend to have clusters of several flowers instead of just one bloom, along with a strong scent.
Ross focuses her interest on large-landscape daffodils, the kind that are bold enough to brighten a large open space. There are the tall, orange-cupped Scarlet O'Haras, adorable little Tete-a-Tetes, and February Gold, which has largely replaced the old King Alfreds for their longevity.
She prefers to plant daffodils in tight groups so they don't look like little lines of soldiers, and advises planting in an odd number like three, five or seven. They should be planted in amended soil with the pointed bulb end up, in a hole that is a good 12 inches in diameter and three times the depth of the bulb. Bulbs can be clustered together, but not touching.
After they bloom, Ross advises, just leave them alone. In most cases, they'll return year after year to trumpet the arrival of a new growing season.
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.