Great Daffodil Appeal

Four gardens filled with illuminated daffodils are launching this year’s Great Daffodil Appeal, the annual fundraising drive by terminal illness charity Marie Curie.

The charity unveiled its ‘Garden of Light’ at Caernarfon Castle in North Wales featuring a giant 10ft tall daffodil lamp, lighting up each time anyone sits in the yellow armchair beneath. The chair is covered in 300 daffodils – each one representing someone affected by terminal illness who will be helped by Marie Curie in Wales this month.

In London, a garden of 4000 illuminated daffodils is in Paternoster Square near St Paul’s, and in Belfast 300 daffodils will light up Belfast Castle. Glasgow, too, has a river of 700 daffodils in Buchanan Street, right in the centre of the city.

Daffodils have come to symbolise the fight against cancer and other terminal illnesses as thousands of daffodil pins are handed out to supporters all over the country. Since it began in 1986, the appeal has raised a whopping £1.2 million, helping provided free hands-on care to people living with a terminal illness.

Dozens of companies and individuals join in each year and you can do your bit too by putting on your own daffodil display in your garden. If you didn’t get around to planting new bulbs last autumn, don’t worry as we have baskets and pots of daffs bursting into flower here at the garden centre in Pickering, ready for you to fill tubs, containers and windowboxes.

Choose cheery little miniatures like ‘Tete-a-Tete’ and drop them into existing container displays to bring a splash of colour to winter combinations alongside heathers, winter pansies, snowdrops and primroses. Taller selections are perfect for planting straight into the garden; set them about 5cm deeper in the soil than they are in their pots and they’ll come back year after year, so you’ll never be caught short again.