Double Primroses
Double primroses are exuberant in their flowering, often fragrant, have a very long flowering period and an enormous colour range, including bi-colours and many dusted with silver.
Double flowers occur naturally in the wild as a genetic anomaly where the calix and reproductive organs transform into petals. Over centuries people have selected these special plants for breeding and have produced many beautiful plants.
Barnhaven probably has the largest selection of double primroses for sale anywhere. We have a lot of old favourites that have been around for many years and stood the test of time. There are also many recent introductions and every year we add some brand new plants hot off our breeding benches.
Flowering period: Early - late spring.
Height: 10-15cm.
Culture: Double primroses are very rewarding in the garden and can be spectacular in container planting. Most flower slighter later than the acaulis and polyanthus forms in mid-spring, but some begin very early indeed. Cosset them with some extra feeding and shady planting and they will reward you year after year.
For tips on growing Double Primroses, see this section.
Subcategories
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Named Double Primroses
Double primroses come in a huge variety of colours, shapes and habit. Here you will find some of the old named double varieties, and also some of our especially selected named plants. These are the best plants that have been selected from our breeding programme as worthy of being named and propagated. They are the result of several seasons of painstaking selection, observation and patient dividing to ensure that we can share them with you.
All the plants we sell are hardy, good garden plants and double primroses are very rewarding in the garden or in containers. They have long flowering periods and will produce hundreds of blooms. They often flower slightly later than the acaulis and polyanthus forms in late spring.
Flowering period: Early - late spring.
Height: 10-15cm.
Culture: Make sure you keep them well-fed, watered and frequently divided, and they will reward you year after year.
For tips on growing Double Primroses, see this section. -
Unnamed Double Primroses
Florence Bellis began working on the Barnhaven double primroses in the 1950’s after finding a few specks of pollen clinging to the petals of the old variety ‘Marie Crousse’, and this exciting adventure has continued ever since with each successor of Barnhaven.
Breeding double primroses has been Lynne Lawsons’s passion since 2001. Basing her work on the rich source of genes that her predecessors at Barnhaven had developed, she has spent many a spring searching for scraps of pollen in the complicated flowers of the double primroses, patiently crossing and recrossing double pollen onto single flowers in the search for that perfect pink or the ultimate stripey blue or that special something that really stands out.
Double primroses don’t carry seed and have very little pollen and therefore necessitate a complicated breeding programme. Each crop takes 2 seasons of hand pollination to produce and then the proportion of double seedlings over the whole crop is roughly 25%. It is incredibly labour intensive but you should see our faces in the nursery when the first seedlings begin to flower…
From time to time, after several seasons of careful selection, observation and patient dividing (sometimes it can take up to ten years), we will decide that one or two extra special plants are worth naming and propagating. However, the hundreds of other seedlings that are not selected are still beautiful, hardy double primroses that come in a huge variety of colours and forms. These are the plants that we are offering for sale here.
Please note that although you can choose the colours, there will still be a wide varying degree of different shades and double forms. The plants in the photos are only representatives of what you may receive.
Flowering period: Early - late spring.
Height: 10-15cm.
Culture: As double primroses don’t produce seed they will produce lots of flowers for a longer period. This means they will need extra feeding and watering to keep them healthy. We also recommend dividing them every couple of years to renew the root stock.For tips on growing Double Primroses, see this section.
