Primulas

My earliest memory of being involved in gardening is of my grandmother.  When I was still very little she gave me some low white metal ‘fencing’, about 15 cm high, to edge my own plot of garden and took me to a garden centre to buy bedding primulas.  I remember being completely entranced by the variety of bright colours available, like pick and mix sweets, and I came home full of excitement to plant them.  My grandma was genuinely very fond of primulas, but looking back they were also the perfect plant for a first garden experience: offering wide variety of colour with instant effect, and for very little money.

The perfect Primula vulgaris

… and man’s creation: the bedding primula

Since then I have struggled a bit with hybrid primulas. Their bright colours and compact form mean that, plonked in the ground, they can look a lot like something from a teletubby’s back garden, and they can’t seem to escape connotations of suburban retirement and tutti frutti bedding schemes.  With the current fashion for pollinator friendly, natural planting we are moving away from hybridised forms and double flowers, and yet our selection and breeding of these forms is a huge part of our horticultural heritage and has its’ roots in the history of plants like the primula and polyanthus.  Oddly other highly bred plants like the dahlia, which has made a remarkable comeback in the last 10 years, don’t seem to be judged so harshly.  I have a suspicion that this is due to the innocence and purity of the much beloved native primrose, Primula vulgaris.  Somehow we don’t mind seeing a frilly hot pink dahlia, but we look at what mankind has done with what was originally the fragile beauty of our wild primrose or oxslip and feel a sense of shame. 

A tuft of cowslips painted by Albrech Durer in 1526

This is ironic, since it is the primula’s natural tendency towards interbreeding which made it such a perfect candidate for hybridisation.  The first ‘polyanthus’ form (several flowers on one long stem) is the result of a naturally occurring cross between Primula vulgaris and the cowslip, Primula veris giving us the oxlip or Primula x polyantha, whilst both the first pink and double forms were introduced from natural occurrences

We have taken this ball and run with it, and the history of the primulas, from auriculas to polyanthus, has provided enough material for whole books on the subject.

Portrait of Martha Rodes with the highly sought after green edged auricula

It is a history of the overlap between nature and human creativity, fashion and even obsession.  It is also a history that encompasses a wide range of human experience and social background. Auriculas, along with other “Florist flowers” were a collector’s item and craze of the very wealthy in the 17th and 18th century, but by the 19th were hugely popular among the working class people of the industrial north and midlands who would compete to show perfect blooms (alongside other flowers like carnations and tulips).  The steps along the road towards the hybrids available today read like episodes in a novel with no small degree of romance to them.  It was a little girl, Julia Mlokossjewicz, who discovered Primula juliae in 1900 on an expedition with her father in the Caucasus, bringing its’ bright magenta flowers and hardiness into the breeding mix and giving rise to the popular Primula ‘Wanda’.   Florence Bellis, a trained concert pianist, found herself bankrupt and with deteriorating health in the 1930s.  She moved into the hayloft of a friend’s barn, spent her last $5 (so the story goes) on a packet of polyanthus seeds and from these humble beginnings went on to breed many of the flowers much loved today.

I am left divided: loving primulas for their history and the memories they bring me, but struggling to find a role for them in a small London garden.  I can quite imagine that one day I will become a nut for auriculas, but that time hasn’t come yet, and whilst the shady end of my garden is full of ‘wild’ primroses and oxlips, they seem to me to fall under a different bracket from the showier polyanthus that result from 400 years of tinkering.

Shades of Primula ‘Zebra Blue’

I now grow the showier flowers in pots, and you’d be surprised how many of the cheap ‘bedding primulas’, when planted individually in terracotta pots rather than in garish mass, take on the old-world charm of a prized specimen plant.  The Elizabethan craze used to be for double flowers, flowers with a ruff and what was called ‘Hose in hose’, where one flower sits on top of another, and many of these old varieties can still be found on-line.  But I would challenge gardeners to stop and look closely at the beauty of even those plants found at 6 for £3 in the garden centre. 

‘Victoriana Gold Lace’

My favourites are ‘Zebra Blue’ which have the most amazing striped delft colouring in shades of blue and white, ‘Francesca’ which has slightly alien looking green petals and ‘Victoriana Gold Lace’ which could hold its own amongst the most prised auriculas.

The dainty ‘Lady Greer’

For planting in beds and borders, simpler forms and colours look more relaxed and naturalise well, whilst a recent study found that less hyrbidised varieties were much more tolerant of variable conditions (drought, wet and cold) and had much higher survival rates.  For a gentle pink twist on the original, Primula vulgaris var. sibthorpii is a variant of P. vulgaris brought back from the Balkans, with pale pink flowers.  Varieties of Primula juliae flower well and are resilient: P. juliae ‘Wanda Alba’ or ‘White Wanda’ keeps all of Wanda’s resilience but with pure white flowers whilst ‘Lady Greer’ is a polyanthus form with all the delicate colouring of a native Oxlip.  I also love the purple foliage of many Irish bred primulas, the most famous of all being ‘Guinevere’ with gentle pink flowers and deep purple stems and leaves.

The purple stemmed, Irish ‘Guinevere’

Their tendency to hyrbridise means that named varieties can’t be propagated by seed but clumps can be divided every 3 to 4 years in June.  Primroses do best moist humus-rich soil, and in partial shade under deciduous trees or shrubs where they will receive light in spring but protection from the full summer sun.

We all look to repeat the memories that mean most to us and last week I took my little Arthur, just under 2, to buy primulas for our garden. He was delighted at having free choice and inevitably picked all the colours I would have avoided, but his joy in selecting and planting them was a delight to watch and hopefully the first step in a passion that will stay with him for life. I will always be grateful to my grandmother for encouraging me in the garden and think of her whenever I see a primula in bloom.

Arthur in our garden busy planting