Following on from my posts about celandines and pulmonarias I am now urging us all to take more notice of primroses and all their spring-flowering cousins with which we can grace our spring borders.
The most beautiful of all are our natives, the Wild Primrose, the Oxlip and the Cowslip. Plant these in your garden and if they like you they will gently spread and wherever they ends up they will never look out-of-place. The primrose will flower earliest of the pair but the cowslips and oxlips will not be far behind. We have clumps of our natives throughout our garden and look forward with great expectations each spring.
 
There are so many cultivated relatives of these natives and relatives of plants from around the world that you can have so many different forms and colours. If you are lucky you will find that some cross with the natives and produce new colour strains.
On a recent visit to the RHS garden up in Yorkshire, Harlow Car, we found many different ones and were amazed in particular by the miniature jewels in the alpine house and in the alpine features around it. My next post will feature these.
greenbenchramblings 
7 replies on “Primroses – more unsung heroes of the spring garden”
The Oxlip is beautiful. I’ve never seen it before so tried to find where I might purchase it but it appears it’s not readily available here in the US. I’m going to have to dig a little deeper.
You may have to rely on seed. They do germinate readily. Malc
Nice post. These are beautifully presented. I don’t grow any of these but should try again.
They are very cheerful plants for the spring garden. Malc
I just love primroses, their delicacy and persistence. I love primulas too, especially the real ones with that wonderful scent. 🙂
Sadly I suffer from breathing problems which give me a pretty poor sense of smell, so I simply enjoy their beauty. Malc
Hi Malc…I can see why you like these…they are so beautiful!