Barnhaven Primroses

Now that summer is almost here, my garden is witnessing the last of the peonies, the glorious middle of bloom time for the roses and the beginnings of the great lily fanfare, all simultaneously.  For once, the flowering of property looks almost like the semi-miraculous floral explosions that you see only at exhibitions like the Philadelphia Flower Show.  Of course, I could see the entire semi-miracle more clearly if the weeds were not so tall. They are, of course, having their own explosion.

With all the “big” flowers blooming, it is hard to even notice the lettuce-like leaf rosettes of the primroses, which had their moment of glory six weeks ago.  Still, those rosettes hold a promise for the future in the lightly shade spots of the garden.  Some of that promise was provided by a single woman, Florence Bellis—1906-1987– of Gresham, Oregon, who singlehandedly created a new, vibrant strain of garden primroses, beginning in the 1930’s.  She also founded a nursery, which she named “Barnhaven”, after the property where it was located.  Her story and that of her glorious primroses is a great Horatio Alger tale that is worth telling, lest this primrose patron be forgotten by gardeners.

Company lore holds that in about 1935, Bellis, a young married woman who had spent much of her life in Oregon and originally trained as a concert pianist, felt a strange sense of destiny  that compelled her to spend her last five Depression-era  dollars on packets of primrose seeds from Sutton’s Nursery, a prominent English firm.  The seeds grew into a formidable stand of primroses that apparently ignited a fire in Florence Bellis.   She began propagating plants and raising them for sale, establishing her nursery.  Her primroses were polyanthus types, which featured clusters of five-petaled, typical primrose flowers atop stalks that arose from the familiar leaf rosettes.  Inspired to delve deeply into the primrose literature at Oregon State University, Bellis refined her dream of the ideal primrose, which would be characterized by “pure color and perfect form”.

She bred those attributes using unconventional pollinating techniques.  Instead of transferring pollen from one plant to another by the conventional brush method, Bellis pollinated by the fierce-sounding method of “emasculating her plants”— using only her fingers to move the pollen.  Though time-consuming, the method bore fruit, and Bellis eventually developed the Barnhaven strains of primroses, characterized by large flowers in clear, bright colors, with contrasting yellow or golden-yellow eye zones in the middle of each bloom.   Because Barnhaven primroses are seed-grown, rather than cloned, different plants within a color strain, like ‘Marine Blues’, will be slightly different shades of the named color.  Overall characteristics, like the shade—blue or pink, for example—and the vibrant nature of each color strain remain constant.

Another primrose type that Bellis resurrected from history’s graveyard was the gold-laced garden primula.  In flowers, “laced” is an old-fashioned term that generally refers to a blossom with a colored edge.  Bellis’ ‘Gilded Ginger’, for example, features bronze petals edged with a thin ribbon of gold.  The centers mirror the color of the edge.  Breeders of fussy show primulas have long cultivated laced varieties, but Bellis intended hers for the hurly-burly scrum of normal flower garden life.

Florence Bellis’ passion for primroses grew as her plants and business flourished.  She was a founder of the American Primrose Society in 1941 and edited its journal for eight years.  Happily, the Society still flourishes.  She kept propagating and selling seeds until shortly after the death of her second husband in 1966.  Though Bellis was royalty in the primula world, she never made much money in the plant business.  She had offers from major plant companies that might have cushioned her retirement,  but Bellis was not of that mindset.  She sent her seed stock to an English couple, Jared and Sylvia Sinclair, who had been faithful customers.  A note attached to the package said it all: “Yours–to keep or kill”.

The Sinclairs kept them, moving the Barnhaven business to the north of England, thereby returning Bellis’ improved primroses to the land of their origins.  Eventually, when the Sinclairs retired in 1990, the business was sold to another English couple, Angela and Keith Bradford, who carried on Bellis’ work and sold her primroses.  The Bradfords took Barnhaven across the Channel, setting up in the French region of Brittany.  They eventually sold the nursery to another primrose-loving couple, Angela and Keith Lawson, who continue the Bellis method of hand pollination and still sell the descendents of Florence Bellis’ carefully bred strains.

If you have a passion for primroses, you may want to try some of the Barnhaven varieties.  They are not easy to come by here in the United States, though the American Primrose Society has a seed exchange for members.  Joining is not expensive and you can find the society at http://www.americanprimrosesociety.com/.  You can also order directly from the Barnhaven nursery, though the procedure is somewhat complicated and costly due to international regulations.  Still, if  you want to emulate Florence Bellis’ original leap of faith, the first step is clicking on http://www.barnhaven.com/order.