World Daffodil Convention 2024

Transcript

00:00 This is Dave Hardy from the Northern Ireland Daffodil Group. We're at Hillsborough Castle

00:05 here, a beautiful afternoon. Dave, tell me what's going on here today.

00:10 So for the last few days we've welcomed delegates from around the world on the World Daffodil

00:15 Tour Convention and this year it's being held in Northern Ireland. So delegates have come

00:21 from Australia, New Zealand, America, all over the place and they've all come to look

00:27 at daffodils and experience the hospitality that Northern Ireland has to offer.

00:33 So what's the big attraction or the fascination with daffodils, Dave?

00:37 Daffodils have been, Northern Ireland as a whole is the hotbed of daffodil breeding and

00:44 there's a lot of us that grow daffodils over here. We have shows every week.

00:49 But why daffodils above any other flower, Dave?

00:51 We've all got, we've all caught what's called yellow fever. So when you get, when we first

00:56 started, when I first started I just thought a daffodil was yellow and when you start getting

01:02 into it then you realise daffodils aren't just yellow and there's so much scope and

01:07 it's all like a bit of a competition so we take our flowers to show and compete against

01:11 each other. And how many types of daffodils are there?

01:14 There's about 30,000 named different varieties. Now a lot of them aren't around anymore but

01:21 yeah there's lots and lots. I grow myself down in Ulmer over 800 different varieties.

01:26 Okay and is there any sort of a show on here in Hillsborough this week?

01:29 This weekend we've got, we've had the World Convention show which has been up at Hillsborough

01:36 Castle and then next week up at Malone House. In Belfast?

01:40 In Belfast. We've got the national show which is the Springfest and there's a daffodil show

01:45 there next weekend. And what date is that on?

01:47 That is, what is it? The 27th and 28th of April.

01:51 April. Super. Thank you.