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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
With all the \u201cbig\u201d 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.\u00a0 Still, those rosettes hold a promise for the future in the lightly shade spots of the garden.\u00a0 Some of that promise was provided by a single woman, Florence Bellis\u20141906-1987– of Gresham, Oregon, who singlehandedly created a new, vibrant strain of garden primroses, beginning in the 1930\u2019s.\u00a0 She also founded a nursery, which she named \u201cBarnhaven\u201d, after the property where it was located.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u00a0that compelled her to spend her last five Depression-era \u00a0dollars on packets of primrose seeds from Sutton\u2019s Nursery, a prominent English firm.\u00a0 The seeds grew into a formidable stand of primroses that apparently ignited a fire in Florence Bellis.\u00a0\u00a0 She began propagating plants and raising them for sale, establishing her nursery.\u00a0 Her primroses were polyanthus types, which featured clusters of five-petaled, typical primrose flowers atop stalks that arose from the familiar leaf rosettes.\u00a0 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 \u201cpure color and perfect form\u201d.<\/p>\n
She bred those attributes using unconventional pollinating techniques.\u00a0 Instead of transferring pollen from one plant to another by the conventional brush method, Bellis pollinated by the fierce-sounding method of \u201cemasculating her plants\u201d\u2014 using only her fingers to move the pollen.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 \u00a0Because Barnhaven primroses are seed-grown, rather than cloned, different plants within a color strain, like \u2018Marine Blues\u2019, will be slightly different shades of the named color.\u00a0 Overall characteristics, like the shade\u2014blue or pink, for example\u2014and the vibrant nature of each color strain remain constant.<\/p>\n
Another primrose type that Bellis resurrected from history\u2019s graveyard was the gold-laced garden primula.\u00a0 In flowers, \u201claced\u201d is an old-fashioned term that generally refers to a blossom with a colored edge.\u00a0 Bellis\u2019 \u2018Gilded Ginger\u2019, for example, features bronze petals edged with a thin ribbon of gold.\u00a0 The centers mirror the color of the edge.\u00a0 Breeders of fussy show primulas have long cultivated laced varieties, but Bellis intended hers for the hurly-burly scrum of normal flower garden life.<\/p>\n
Florence Bellis\u2019 passion for primroses grew as her plants and business flourished.\u00a0 She was a founder of the American Primrose Society in 1941 and edited its journal for eight years.\u00a0 Happily, the Society still flourishes.\u00a0 She kept propagating and selling seeds until shortly after the death of her second husband in 1966.\u00a0 Though Bellis was royalty in the primula world, she never made much money in the plant business.\u00a0 She had offers from major plant companies that might have cushioned her retirement, \u00a0but Bellis was not of that mindset.\u00a0 She sent her seed stock to an English couple, Jared and Sylvia Sinclair, who had been faithful customers.\u00a0 A note attached to the package said it all: \u201cYours–to keep or kill\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Sinclairs kept them, moving the Barnhaven business to the north of England, thereby returning Bellis\u2019 improved primroses to the land of their origins.\u00a0 Eventually, when the Sinclairs retired in 1990, the business was sold to another English couple, Angela and Keith Bradford, who carried on Bellis\u2019 work and sold her primroses.\u00a0 The Bradfords took Barnhaven across the Channel, setting up in the French region of Brittany.\u00a0 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\u2019 carefully bred strains.<\/p>\n
If you have a passion for primroses, you may want to try some of the Barnhaven varieties.\u00a0 They are not easy to come by here in the United States, though the American Primrose Society has a seed exchange for members.\u00a0 Joining is not expensive and you can find the society at http:\/\/www.americanprimrosesociety.com\/<\/a>.\u00a0 You can also order directly from the Barnhaven nursery, though the procedure is somewhat complicated and costly due to international regulations.\u00a0 Still, if\u00a0 you want to emulate Florence Bellis\u2019 original leap of faith, the first step is clicking on http:\/\/www.barnhaven.com\/order<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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.\u00a0 For once, the flowering of property looks almost like the semi-miraculous floral explosions that you see only at exhibitions like the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[1421,1419,1420,1418,1422,549,126,551],"class_list":["post-1897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-american-primrose-society","tag-barnhaven-primroses","tag-florence-bellis","tag-polyanthus-primula","tag-primrose-breeding","tag-primula","tag-shade-plants","tag-spring-perennials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1898,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}