2 
BARR’S Gold Medal Daffodils, 1904. 
Short Extract from ‘‘The Saturday Review,” April 30th, 1904. 
“SOME DAFFODIL PORTRAITS. 
** On the table in a tall glass vase before me stand half-a-dozen choice specimens of the newest daffodils, 
gathered but last afternoon out of Messrs. Barr’s paradise at Ditton Hill, but already, alas ! in this airless town, 
for all one’s care, beginning a little to curl and droop. You exquisite creatures I Irresistible is the desire you 
induce in one to let others share the delight with which you have refreshed one's own tired eyes and brain. Do 
not take it as an impertinence if for such an end this feeble pen tries to sketch some likeness of your forms and 
hues. Stay with me at least long enough to let it draw a suggestion of your loveliness, however clumsily. 
How, if it may send a fresh inquirer or two to wait on you, and so surely to become most deeply your debtor, 
roost ardently your devotee ! 
" The whole family of Narcissi belong to the blessed spring-time, and appropriately belong to it with their 
slender growth, and gay yet delicately coloured blossoms. Other flowers are as lovely, doubtless, but none so 
typical in form and hue of the radiant joy and elegant strength of youth. They are no weaklings, that cannot 
stand in the open spring’s frost and rain, needing to be nursed and coddled. If they have the dainty radiance 
of healthy youth, they have none the less its hardiness. Let it be said, and without seeming fantastical, they 
mean for us youth as the Greeks thought of it and carved it ; or, to come nearer home, the youth of our genuine 
English boys and girls, bred in the pure country, disciplined in fine traditions of civility, clean and frank and 
supple. Delicious and wholesome they are ; those are the exact words they instinctively call up in our mind as 
their beauty holds us gazing and gazing on them. . . . The Peter Baxr daffodil grows high, over a foot and 
a-half high, with broad, blue-green leaves reaching right up to the flower. This flower is large and strongly 
built, reaching straight out from the stalk. The perianth, of firm, creamy white, its divisions elongate and but 
slightly twisted, measures four inches across. From its centre stands out the trumpet two inches long, at its 
edge expanding, slightly turned over and frilled, and of a white only just a thought creamier — ah ! but what 
distinction lies in that subtle change ! — than the perianth. As parts of the flower pass into the shade they are 
luminous as silver. Here indeed is a monarch majestically imposing — the king felicitously called of these 
white trumpet daffodils, as the well-known Madame de GraafF, from which partly it is sprung, is with equal 
felicity called their queen. . . 
Extract from “The Westminster Gazette,” May 6th, 1904. 
“IN A SURREY BULB GARDEN. 
** It has been said, between the grumblings as to the lateness of the present spring, that at all events the 
London parks have profited by it, and the flowers in them, now that at last they have come, are more beautiful 
than they have been for many seasons past. So that the Londoner, revelling in exceptionally fine weather, may 
disport himself in gardens where it is easy to forget the six winter months of almost unbroken gloom which lie 
just behind him. And if the urban lover of nature has in this manner the joys of spring brought to his door, 
the dweller in at least one district of Suburbia is equally favoured. Of course he has his heaths and greens and 
commons on which to watch the gradual unfolding of foliage and wild flowers, but if by good fortune he has 
pitched his tent in South-Western villadom, he has also the advantage of being able to reach, almost without 
effort, the loveliest spring flower garden in this country, which just now is one glorious, dazzling mass of colour. 
We mean the broad acres of the well-known firm Messrs. Peter Barr & Sons at Ditton Hill. 
** As you enter their gates you are suddenly transferred from a typical English rural scene into the heart of 
Holland, where the sunny plains round Haarlem represent at this time of year a scene from fairyland. From 
two to three million daffodils stand there in full bloom — a waving, whispering mass of all the shades of gold, on 
a background of fresh green foliage. The sight is perfectly marvellous, and certainly quite unequalled in this 
country. At one point you come upon a bed in which 10,000 blossoms of the gigantic Gloria Mundi daffodils 
turn their rich scarlet-stained yellow crowns towards the sun. Next to them the pale, delicate beauty of 
Madame do Graaff stands in exquisite contrast ; close by the Ariadne, pale and dainty as a dream-flower, 
presents her curiously interesting flattened cup to you ; and, again, there is that large golden daffodil, famous 
for the absolute perfection of its shape, which goes by the name of Cleopatra. King Alfred, with a crown 
of gold above a stem over two feet high, reigns over another large tract ; and all around you the infinitude of 
shades, from deepest burnished gold to palest lemon-yellow, and to the milky white of the Narcissus Poeticus, 
twinkle and sparkle in the sun. while further on stretch beds of tulips in all shades of rose-pink, purple, 
crimson, and terra-cotta. 
“ Here also may be seen the rare and precious new daffodils, the prices of which remind one of the great 
tulip craze of the eighteenth century, when fortunes were paid for a single bulb, and when the Dutch nation lost 
its reputation for a stolidity that would not desert it even at the crack of doom. There is one new white daffodil, 
of a gigantic trumpet shape, which is the rarest of all and the most expensive. It goes by the name of Peter 
Barr, and its price is fifty guineas a bulb. Curiously enough, three bulbs only arc in the market, which fact 
reminds one of the legendary three black tulip bulbs and their romantic career in Holland two centuries ago. 
But, strange to say, it is not the American miilionairc at all who buys these bulbs, whose value is their weight 
in gold many times over. There are a number of British amateur bulb growers who are quite ready and willing 
to pay the price. And this, in these days of few enthusiasms except for personal luxuries and excitements, 
is a pleasing fact to note. 
“One attractive feature concerning the Ditton Hill fairy gardens is that Messrs. Barr make welcome all 
visitors who come to see this pageant of spring. Many of our readers will no doubt avail themselves of this 
opportunity of seeing one of the most beautiful sights in the country. 
