Bright blossoms of yellow, orange, white, and pink spread joy across our island starting in early April. This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, April 26 and 27, we celebrate daffodils and springtime with Nantucket’s annual Daffodil Festival (check our events calendar for all the fun). A major part of this special weekend is the 49th Annual Nantucket Community Daffodil Flower Show.
Presented by the Nantucket Garden Club (NCG) and accredited by The American Daffodil Society, hundreds of gorgeous blooms will be on display open to the public at Bartlett’s Ocean View Farm from 2 to 5 pm on Saturday and from 10 am to 3 pm on Sunday. This year’s show theme is “Its Daffy Time…Let’s Dance!” chaired by Linda Fraker and Ann Maury.
It was Jean MacAusland, a past NGC President who, more than a half century ago, donated and encouraged the community to plant a million daffodil bulbs to enhance Nantucket’s natural beauty. They like good drainage, thus our island’s sandy soil works well for growing daffodils. NGC has continued planting daffodils along the island’s roadways and bike paths. The annual Nantucket Daffodil Festival all began with Jean, including organizing island residents to create the antique car parade and the ‘Sconset picnic.
This fall, the Nantucket Garden Club is hoping to plant 50,000 daffodil bulbs to commemorate the 50th Daffodil Show in 2026. To complete such an undertaking, donations are needed to help NGC achieve this. Funds need to be raised now to order bulbs in time for planting this fall. From late September to early November is the ideal time to plant the bulbs as they need 12 weeks of cold weather to get them ready to bloom. Donations can be made at the Flower Show and at nantucketgardenclub.org
On Saturday, April 26 free shuttle buses will transport people from town at 30 Washington Street to the show at 33 Bartlett Farm Road. The last bus will return from the farm at 5 pm. Admission to the flower show is free, but donations will be accepted toward the Garden Club’s Island Daffodil Planting Fund.
The entire Nantucket community is encouraged to enter the arrangement, horticulture, and photography sections of the show. Exhibitors must bring their entries to Bartlett’s Farm either on Friday, April 25 between noon and 6 pm or Saturday morning, April 26 between 7 and 9:30 am. Children and first-time horticulture exhibitors are encouraged to enter on Friday afternoon when NGC members and experts from the American Daffodil Society will be available to answer questions and assist.
Here are some fun facts about daffodils…
~ Deer and rabbits don’t eat daffodils.
~ If the conditions are right, a successful field of daffodils can bloom for up to 50 years.
~ They also like areas where the grass can be left unmown, which is why hillsides and open spaces are popular daffodil spots.
~ There are early-, mid- and, late-season varieties to plant to get for five weeks of blooms. In general, yellow daffodils are first to bloom, pink daffodils tend to be late-season bloomers. daffodilfestival.com/wealth-of-daffodil-info
~ Pharaoh Ramses II was buried with two daffodil bulbs covering his eyes. The ancient Greeks associated the flower with the Asphodel Meadows, where souls were believed to wander.
~ Daffodils were first used in gardens around 300 BC. Romans also treasured the flower. Daffodils became popular again in the 1600s, when the English gave them a place in the garden. It is thought when settlers came to America from Great Britain, they brought daffodils as a reminder of their earlier lives.
~ Daffodils are the birth flower for March.
~ In some traditions, a bunch of daffodils is considered a lucky gift, while a single daffodil is thought to bring misfortune.
~ Daffodils are the national flower of Wales.
~ In the past, daffodils were used in brewing herbal concoctions and are still helpful in healthcare today. They contain a unique compound called galantamine, which is used in making medication for Alzheimer’s disease. BUT unsupervised ingestion of daffodils can be fatal, so don’t try this yourself.
~ Another compound in daffodils – narciclasine – has been explored for potential anti-cancer properties.
~ Daffodil sap can be toxic to other flowers when sharing a vase, causing them to wilt quickly. To minimize this effect, soak daffodils alone for at least one hour and up to a day first to remove the sap, and don’t recut the stems.
~ Next year’s blooms depend on this year’s foliage, so don’t cut them back until the leaves have turned yellow. The plant continues to absorb nutrients for about six weeks after the blooms have died.
~ Daffodils (Shuǐxiān huā) are the symbolic flower of the Chinese New Year – specifically N. tazetta. If a daffodil blooms in your garden during the Chinese New Year it is said to bring great luck.
~ Cornwall in the UK is the world’s largest producer of daffodils, with roughly 900 million daffodil stems grown in Cornwall per year. They harvest an estimated 80% of the daffodils sold as cut flowers globally.
~ There are between 40 and 200 different daffodil species, subspecies or varieties of species, and more than 32,000 registered cultivars (named hybrids) divided among the thirteen divisions of the official classification system.
~ Daffodil flowers consist of a central cup or trumpet, properly called a corona, surrounded by six petals, called the perianth.
~ Daffseek.org is a vast daffodil database with photos where you can look up different varieties.
