Spring daffodils may seem like a distant dream as we head into the dormant months of winter, but now is also the time when bulb planting sets the stages for next year’s bloom. This month’s episode features two bulb experts who have led programs at Oak Spring, Jason Delaney and Sara Van Beck, in conversation with each other about the art and science of daffodils and the important role they play in the future of gardens amidst a changing climate.

Jason Delaney is a graduate of Michigan State University’s Institute of Agricultural Technology. His horticultural career began as a student laborer at MSU’s Beal Botanical Garden where his love of public gardening was planted.  Following an internship at the world-renowned Missouri Botanical Garden in 1995, he accepted a full-time position there for nearly 21 colorful years, ultimately as North Gardens Supervisor and Bulb Collections Specialist. Today, Jason owns and operates Professional Horticultural Services, and PHS Daffodils. Jason’s prized plant collections are situated on nearly four acres of family land where over 3,500 varieties of daffodils, nearly 2,000 varieties of daylilies, and over 500 historic irises are grown for small-scale commercial production, breeding, evaluation, and preservation.   Jason has been hybridizing daffodils and daylilies, and dabbling in breeding trumpet lilies and crinums, since the 1990s; a few of his cultivars are now in commercial production. Follow his adventures on Instagram, at phsdaffodils and phsdaylilies.

Sara Van Beck is a former museum curator with the National Park Service and has served as an American Daffodil Society (ADS) board member since 2004. She established the ADS Display Garden program in 2007 and then served as the ADS Historics Committee chair for eleven years. Her garden history work includes historic research for Atlanta’s Historic Oakland Cemetery, and serving on the Acquisitions Committee of the Cherokee Garden Library, Atlanta History Center. As a Corresponding Member to the Royal Horticulture Society Narcissus Classification Advisory Group, she led a three-year effort to revise the classification for tazettas. Author of Daffodils in American Gardens, 1733-1940 (2015) co-author of Daffodil in Florida: A Field Guide to the Coastal South (2004), and numerous articles published in The Daffodil Journal, The Magnolia, journal of the Southern Garden History Society, and Florida Gardening.

Host: Chris Stafford
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