The best places to see Daffodils in Cumbria

The past week of sunshine has been a week of high activity for gardeners.    Pruning, dividing plants and mulching while the ground is still cold but dry.   Today the air is crystal clear, the sky is blue but the temperature has dropped to minus 3 degrees Centigrade.     


Daffodils line the gravel path in my garden

At this time of year, with trees naked of leaves, grand vistas continue to unfold throughout the region.   The daffodils are dancing in the breeze, gay and everchanging.   

We have so many beautiful spots to view daffodils in Cumbria, one of the most famous is Dora's Field, named for the daughter of William Wordsworth (1770-1850).   The field is tucked behind St. Mary's Church, Rydal, at the foot of Rydal Mount, the poet's home from 1813 until his death, at the age of 80, in 1850.   Dora's Field was where William Wordsworth planned to build a house for his daughter instead, after her early death, he planted the area with daffodils. To remember Dora are the native narcissus pseudonarcissus dominating a sloping field a short hop from Rydal Water.

The poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was inspired by a walk.   William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy passed Ullswater's Glencoyne Bay when returning to Grasmere from a visit to Eusemere, the home of slave abolitionist Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846).    A distance of almost twenty miles.


Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater - narcissus pseudonarcissus. 

"I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.   The wind blew directly over the lake to them.   There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher  but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway - We rested again and again.   The Bays were stormy and we heard the waves at different distances and in the middle of the water like the Sea."

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771 - 1855) - The Grasmere Journal - 15th April 1802

Other great places to view daffodils in Cumbria include the Wordsworth Daffodil Garden in Grasmere. Squeezed between the River Rothay, the Wordsworth family graves and St. Oswald's Church are hundreds of daffodils.    



The Wordsworth Daffodil Garden, Grasmere


The village of Caldbeck, Lowther Castle near Penrith, Brigsteer Woods and Sizergh Castle are vibrant with these most popular of garden plants.   They create a welcome splash of colour to brighten the days and indicate that winter is over.

Sizergh Castle's mediaeval Great Hall was replaced in the 1560's by a new hall, with the family accommodation on the upper floor and an open space underneath.    This Tudor gem is set in a 1600 acre estate where there are two lakes, a woodland garden, kitchen garden, orchard, terrace garden, Dutch garden, herbaceous borders and wildflower banks.    The limestone rock garden was made by T. R. Hayes and Sons of Ambleside in 1926.




Sizergh Castle and Gardens in a limestone region of Cumbria

The word 'Narcissus' comes from Greek mythology.   A nymph called Echo fell in love with a young Greek called Narcissus.   He broke Echo's heart so she lived alone until nothing but an echo of her remained.   Nemesis, the God of revenge, heard the story, lured Narcissus to a pool.   Handsome and vain Narcissus saw his reflection in the pool, leaned forward to see himself, fell in and drowned.   He turned into a flower.

Daffodils were introduced into gardens in about 300 BC.   The Greek botanist and philosopher
listed and described many in his nine-volume "Enquiry into Plants".    The bulbs were brought to England by the Romans who thought the sap from daffodils had healing powers.



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