Graham Porter's Gardening: Primula Vulgaris
PRIM and proper despite its vulgar name.
Despite all the cold weather of recent weeks, my two clumps of Primula vulgaris (Primrose) have woken up and are just starting to flower – this display will now last until well into April, beating many other spring flowering plants for the longest display of flowers.
The books describe the flower colour as pale yellow but there is something else about their flowers that endears them to so many of us.
In recent years the wild Primrose and its close relative, the Cowslip, have been making a come back and we can now find hedgerows and wild embankments with carpets of them – the re-invention of wild flower meadows and the gradual reduction in the use of herbicides on farmland have helped to increase their numbers.
So, what do we need to do to have a few of these delicate harbingers of spring? A quiet corner in dappled shade with no artificial fertilisers and no chemicals is a goods starting point. A humus rich, well-drained woodland type soil will give them all they need to live in and, left undisturbed for a number of years, you may find that they start to seed themselves around.
Given these conditions, our native wild Primrose will associate itself with many other woodland favourites, including Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), Winter Aconites (Eranthus hyemalis), Periwinkle (Vinca minor), Cyclamen hederifolium, Narcissi and Violas.
