It’s a nippy March morning, and the frost from the previous night has yet to recede. Undeterred by the damp chill, Becky Heath makes her way down the narrow center isle of a muddy field, thick with daffodils. Reaching a grouping of Fragrant Rose, she crouches down until she’s eye-to-eye with the towering bouquet of white petals and pink cups, the weak spring sunlight filtering through the translucent bodies.

Like Dorothy amid the poppies, this is where the unofficial queen of the daffodils is happiest. Often tailed by barn cats, Daffy and Dilly, Becky and her husband Brent spend the majority of March and April in the fields of their ten-acre farm in Gloucester, Va., breeding hundreds of daffodils. While only one in a thousand crosses will result in a new breed, it’s a chance that the pair is willing to take. “Watching it come to fruition, whether or not it gets introduced, is such a pleasure. Once we find one that we’re going to grow,” says Becky, “you rush to name it and introduce it to people like it’s your new baby.”

It’s a springtime ritual that Brent began thirty years ago, and it’s part of what makes their company, Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, one of the most popular sources for bulbs in the country among home and professional gardeners. On average, Brent and Becky ship nearly one million bulbs nationwide annually and have a celebrity clientele that includes Steven Spielburg, Molly Ringwald, and Sen. John Warner. In addition to their hybrids, their spring and fall catalog offers three hundred varieties of traditional daffodil bulbs as well as seven hundred other bulb varieties, from acanthus to zingibar. Their vast inventory comes from more than 250 growers from all over the nation as well as Holland, England, and Israel.

The four-generation family business was started in 1900 by Brent’s grandfather, who grew and sold daffodil bulbs to local farmers. The enterprise evolved into a cut-flower industry, then known as The Daffodil Mart under Brent’s parents, who grew bulbs and shipped flowers northward on steamers.

While Brent and Becky no longer sell cut flowers, today the company has expanded to include fifty-two employees, including Becky’s son Jay, who’s the general manager, and her other son Duke, a wholesale representative; her daughter, Dorothy, has a cut-flower business in North Carolina. Their eighteen-acre, 17,000-square-foot facility is down the road from their farm and is complete with greenhouse, warehouse, a trial garden—where a sample of everything sold is planted—and a gift shop chock full of gardening tools, pottery, and books. (Brent and Becky have collaborated on two books together; in 2003 they were inducted into the garden writers’ hall of fame).

Expansion plans for the facility include teaching gardens, featuring different “rooms” to demonstrate how to combine bulbs, shrubs, and trees, as well as perennial, tropical, and native gardens. “We’re educators first, gardeners second, and bulb-sellers third,” explains Becky, a former school teacher. “We like to experiment with what does and doesn’t work and share what we can with people.”

It’s lunch time on the farm, and Brent, fresh from hybridizing in the field, breezes through the kitchen carrying the woody scent of daffodils. On every available tabletop in the house sits either a periodical that pertains to flowers, a Brent and Becky’s catalogue, a garden tool, or containers with budding bulbs. It’s a lifestyle that has become second nature to Becky. Before marrying Brent in 1979, Becky was a single mother whose only experience in the garden was growing vegetables. “Back then, I didn’t know the difference between daffodils and tulips,” says Becky; the former music teacher sings in a local choral group in her spare time, as well as plays numerous different instruments. “But I loved being in the dirt. Plus, Brent needed me. He’s dyslexic. One time he ordered 2,100 big yellow daffodils bulbs instead of 1,200. That was it. He doesn’t order anymore.”

At that time, Brent, who was running the operation with his mother, asked Becky to help him with the business. Becky spent the next six years watching and learning the ropes, and in 1999 she became president and CEO. When customers call to place an order, they’re likely to talk directly to Becky, one of the eight operators who man the phones on most days. “One of the most difficult questions I have ever been asked,” recalls Becky, “was by a woman who was getting married. She wanted to know what would be in bloom on that day. But then there are the satisfying times, like when a woman who recently moved from the East Coast to Arizona called me in tears because she got her tulips to bloom out there, and it reminded her of home.”
The twosome’s knowledge of daffodils is in high demand: Becky has appeared on the “Martha Stewart Living” TV show three times as well as on “Good Morning America”. Brent travels to more than forty-six cities annually giving gardening seminars. Every Wednesday and Saturday from mid-March to mid-April they offer farm tours to garden clubs and master gardener groups. And it’s no accident that the green spaces around town are coated with daffodils each spring. Each year Brent and Becky donate thousands of bulbs to schools, churches, and clubs all over the country, from Gloucester to Denver. “What we do helps people to smile,” explains Brent. “We have a positive impact on people’s mood and minds. If we had more flowers in the world, we would create a more harmonious world.”

Daffodils of a different color

While millions of the traditional all-yellow daffodils are sold yearly, an increasing number of carefully bred hybrids hit the shelves each season, variations on the theme with hues from a pale coral to deep vermillion cups and new fluted petal shapes. Of the more than 27,000 varieties, there are about 475 or so available commercially, most of them hybrids.

Brent and Becky Heath love the idea of creating new versions. Most must be hybridized manually because natural hybrids don’t often occur. The flower’s pollen is too heavy to be wind-borne and its nectar isn’t attractive to insects. This painstaking process takes the Heaths into the fields, swabbing the pollen from the male onto the pistil of the female. They then wait six to eight weeks for gestation, when they harvest the BB-sized black seeds from the swollen pod at the flower base of the female. It can take as many as seven years for the seed to produce a single bloom and bulb. After choosing one they like—it has to be pretty unique—they “test grow” it for disease resistance and dozens of characteristics: Does the head droop? Does it last?
The new bulbs go all the way to Holland, with its long, cool growing season, where the Heaths meet with a group of growers for further assessment and objective opinions. Thousands get tested, but few are worthy enough to go into “production.”

The Heaths have introduced about a dozen hybrids. One of the first, in the early eighties, was the Katie Heath, a pink-cupped hybrid, named after Brent’s mother.  Although Katie had always rolled her eyes at hybrids, she gasped when she saw it: “That’s about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” The Pappy George, from the Jonquilla division with its dark, narrow foliage (jonquils are a kind of daffodil), is for Brent’s father, who loved that sweet-smelling variety and the dark orange color. 

Clearly, this flowery business is a mix of sentiment and economic savvy. It’s why they present new hybrids to an impartial committee overseas. Says Becky: “When they start hooping and clapping, you know you have something good.” —Kathy H. Ely

Tips on Maintaining Cut Daffodils

After daffodils are picked, place in tepid water diluted with a few teaspoons of Sprite, which adds a little sugar to the water as well as acid. (It cuts down on the bacterial level.) Once in water, let flowers sit for an hour before arranging with other flowers. Trim stems back a little each day.

Brent and Becky’s Bulbs
7900 Daffodil Ln.
Gloucester, Va.
804-693-3966 or http://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com