Primula

Primula 'Barbara Midwinter' £3 / £3.50
On the scale of a primrose, with deep carmine flowers with well separated petals, through the winter. Distinctive leaves. Really special. juliae x (megaseifolia x juliae).

Primula 'Blue Riband' £3 / £3.50
A compact primrose with large violet blue flowers in spring.

Primula 'Clarence Elliott' £3
Perhaps the most satisfactory allionii hybrid: vigorous and floriferous. Large lilac, yellow centred flowers in early spring, glaucous leaves. Alpine house or perfectly drained sink.

Primula Cowichan polyanthus (all £3 / £3.50)
We're not plant snobs, honest guv. A good polyanthus is a lovely thing, especially when used for its colour and form rather than in a jazzy bedding scheme. Barnhaven's Cowichan seed strains with their prolific, normal sized (i.e. not blowsy giant) flowers with only small yellow eyes are great, but almost uniquely in the nursery trade we go on to select elite clones and propagate them vegetatively, taking care not to transmit virus in the process. This year we offer Amethyst (deep plummy violet-blue), Garnet (selected for good deep red-brown with tiny eye) and Venetian, an almost indescribable glowing red with a hint of brown.

Primula double primroses £3 / £3.50
'Captain Blood' dark red, 'Dawn Ansell' -  a pure white double jack. 'Lilacina Plena' - mauvy pink, vigorous and highly satisfactory.

Primula gracilipes £3
Loads of purple pink flowers protruding from among the dense leaves of the rosettes in early spring - a cheering sight on a cold February day. A small plant for a choice, cool, moist-but-well-drained (aargh!) position, it's not nearly as difficult as the books make petiolarid primulas sound. For us it survives and flowers beautifully after winters of utter neglect outdoors in small pots of our standard compost - even we don't plant it in our sodden clay.

Primula munroi £3 / £3.50
A large flowered, deep lilac, high altitude form, flowering 10-15cm high. Humusy soil.

Primula 'Paris '90' £3 / £3.50
Flat-faced creamy white polyanthus with violet picotee edge. Not over-large.

Primula x pubescens 'Christine' £2.75 / £3.50 
A robust hybrid auricula with red-purple flowers, growable in the open garden. I'm not a huge auricula fan, but this is lovely.

Primula pulverulenta Bartley hybrids £3 / £3.50
Pretty form of this candelabra species: flowers pale pink with a paler eye. Divided from selected plants.

Primula sieboldii 'Duane's Choice' £3 / £3.50
A brash American dude. It's the one of the best clones of the sort which has dark backs and pale fronts to the divided petals, in this case a strong purple pink back giving excellent contrast. The flowers are large, and the edges of the petals tend to curl forwards, showing the backs. All our sieboldiis are propagated vegetatively. They go down to underground crowns in winter. Drought is their enemy.

Primula sieboldii 'Dart Rapids' £3.25 / £3.75
We've taken pains to select an equally good, but far more refined and English counterpart. Again it has a pale face and strongly coloured reverse, this time in very pale / really deep lavender, and with entire petals. Every year they jump out at us when looking for irresistible plants to take to the next plant fair, but we've resisted the temptation to sell it until we had enough. Probably the only primula we'll ever name.

Primula sieboldii f. lactiflora £3 / £3.50
Pure white with no feathering, just a small apical notch to the broad petals.

Primula sieboldii 'Pago Pago' £3 / £3.50
This name refers to a seed strain, of which this is a selected clone. Moderately sized flowers of an intense magenta-pink, not at all frilly.

Primula 'Sir Bedivere' £3 / £3.50
Little primrose, dark purplish red flowers with starry yellow eye, red petioles.

Primula 'Tie Dye' £3 / £3.50
Ginormous, awesome / mega-gross polyanthus with violet, white-streaked flowers. You can thank, or blame, Dan Heims.

Primula vulgaris 'Viridis' £3 / £3.50
The green primrose. A strange and ancient thing. The flowers have a green corolla, sometimes with a normal texture and sometimes a bit leafy. Some flowers have a second corolla. All this variation is within the one clone. Over the years it has inevitably picked up virus, but this doesn't show much when the plants have settled down. Apparently completely sterile.