A Visit to the World Daffodil Convention in Melbourne

I’ve just returned from a World Daffodil Convention in Melbourne, Australia. And it was terrific! I know, you probably can’t imagine a world daffodil convention anywhere, but they’ve been occurring on a regular, every 4-year rotation, since 1996. It’s a good opportunity to see daffodils grown in other countries. So, are they different? The short answer is no, but some of the breeders in Australia have concentrated on different types of daffodils. They’re far ahead in breeding miniature daffodils, but about the same in breeding divisions 1 to 4. The United States has always been in the forefront of breeding in divisions 5-9, thanks to the work of the late Grant Mitsch in Oregon. For many years, Holland had the lead in split corona or butterfly type daffodils, but that has changed over the last dozen years. Now there are breeders in all the other daffodil growing countries developing newer and better split corona daffodils as well.

The Melbourne organizers did a great job. The pre-convention tours were great. And we always wanted to stay longer--to walk through Fred Silcock's fields or to linger in Alison Miller's lovely garden. Fred has been planting about 30,000 daffodil seeds per year, with the most he ever planted in one year being 80,000, so his fields were a grower’s field. Alison’s was a lovely garden. Yes, it rained, but doesn't it always rain on tour days? The visit to the Blyth Brothers Daffodil Farm, with its hundreds of acres of daffodils being grown for cut flowers and for bulbs was impressive. Several of us commented that we'd never seen 'Jetfire' looking so good. We visited Will Ashburner's Hancock Daffodils display where we saw lots of “decorative” daffodils many of us were unfamiliar with. And then we visited the Victoria Daffodil Society's 50-day Daffodil Display in the Olinda Rhododendron Garden. You read it right--50-days! We were invited into Graeme Brumley's garden to see his seedlings.

The show was impressive, with international competition and wonderful seedlings, both standard and miniature. The seminars were interesting, with an international cast presenting talks on decorative daffodils, species, doubles, miniatures, registration, and intermediates. The final night we visited Ian Dyson's plant nursery where we saw a greenhouse full of magnificent pots of daffodils followed by dinner and entertainment. In between we took a ride on "Puffing Billy," saw koalas and penguins, were lavishly fed at morning and afternoon teas everywhere we visited, had wonderful lunches and dinners. So, thanks to all who worked so hard to entertain and educate us. It was grand!

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