Show auriculas include green- and grey-edged cultivars such as ‘Prague’ and ‘Warwick’ selfs – flowers of a single colour with a central ring of paste or farina stripes and fancies and alpines, which are gold- or light-centred. However, the leaves and flowers of many show types are covered in fragile farina, a floury coating that must be kept intact for exhibiting. The hat is a nod to their history.’Ĭategorised as show, alpine, double and border types, Primula auricula is highly varied and surprisingly hardy.
#Flower auricula professional#
‘In the nineteenth century, auriculas were popular, but they were expensive and only wealthy, professional people could afford to grow them. Yet this was no pastime for the hoi polloi and ruffians.
On the opening day, he dons a bowler hat to greet visitors, a reference to master auricula growers of yore, whose Florists’ Feasts saw them gather in public houses to exhibit, vye for trophies and drink the night away. Simon is now a veteran RHS Chelsea Flower Show exhibitor. Simon gave up his job as a landscape gardener and travelled the country doing shows, while Bill stayed at home, looking after the plants and building their National Collection of double auriculas until his death in 2016. ‘But we hired a large haulage truck and driver, went over and came back with all the plants.’ ‘I’d never been to Germany, and I don’t think Dad had even been out of the country, apart from a trip to the Isle of Wight,’ says Simon. MAY WE SUGGEST: Our garden editor selects her must-have garden tools ‘By then, it wasn’t really a hobby any more.’ And when a retiring nurseryman in Germany offered them his collection, numbering around 30,000 plants, they could not refuse. ‘We put up more greenhouses in our garden in Surrey, borrowed a bit of next door’s garden and put up a polytunnel there, too,’ Simon remembers.
Winning the difficult ‘best six’ class (six auriculas in the same category, all judged faultless) soon marked them out as a top grower and, encouraged by Brenda Hyatt, doyenne of auriculas, they went on to exhibit at RHS shows. ‘My father always grew a few, but when I began to take an interest, things took off.’ By the time Simon was 11, he and his father Bill were exhibiting at the National Auricula & Primula Society and gaining trophies.
Plant collecting is notoriously addictive but, for Simon Lockyer, dainty, delicate auriculas have become both a muse and a profession. Light-centred alpine Primula auricula ‘Gwen’ Annaick Guitteny
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