bucks Beautiful
by Susan Sandor
It’s pretty safe to say Mr. Wordsworth, author of a profound poem about his love of daffodils, would be a pretty happy fellow living in Bucks County today instead of 18th and 19th century England. One million daffodils have been planted along the highways, byways, canal, museums, parks, and other familiar places, by a nonprofit known as Bucks Beautiful. Of course, this number does not account for all the daffodils planted in the clay soil indigenous to our area by private gardeners who are as fond of daffodils as perhaps Wordsworth once was.
Bucks Beautiful exists to promote and broaden the development of gardens throughout the county and was the brainchild of Bob Byers and Jack McCaughan, who founded the organization in 1991. Bucks Beautiful started a project called “Bulbs for Bucks” in 2010 with Chuck Gale of Gale’s Nurseries, taking the lead. Reaching the goal of planting one million daffodils was achieved this past fall and two events will be held this spring, while the narcissus are in bloom, to celebrate the mission accomplished.
You can expect to see the one million daffodils in bloom early April if the weather does what it should in spring. The enormous golden display should last about four weeks since the bulbs are a mix of varieties such as Dutch Master, Martinette, and Yellow Cheerfulness with successive bloom times. Why daffodils instead of tulips or other spring bulbs? Because they naturalize or multiply in the ground and daffodils are deer resistant. And if I can quote the last two lines of Wordsworth’s Daffodil poem, this is how residents and visitors to Bucks County may feel: “And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.”
To read more about Bucks Beautiful, turn to page 123 in the Spring 2015 issue of Bucks County Magazine.