By Jessica Riggio | Photos by Holly Leitner
When the ground is brown and winter is still clinging to the air, an ocean of daffodils along Alden Road announces spring every year in the Town of Walworth. We’re not just talking two or three dozen yellow trumpets erupting from the earth; there are, in fact, hundreds of thousands of daffodils blooming and that’s just what’s visible from the road.
Richard and Nancy Rasmussen say there are about 2 million daffodil bulbs, in total, planted on the 40 acres of their farm fronting Alden Road. The couple purchased the property in 1984 and Richard started planting daffodils along the road about a year later, in an area now known as the Daffodil Nursery, located next to the house the couple built in 1990.
The daffodils are a passion project for Richard. He started with 250 daffodils in three different varieties, and every year he digs out bulbs that have doubled and started to form clumps, and spreads them out over his acreage. Now, 40 years later, that original patch has grown to millions of flowers. “When you look at all the daffodils you see out there, they’re all descendants of those originals,” Richard explains.
When the couple moved to the property, Richard chose to plant both daffodils and tulips to add some color to the landscape. He says he grew up around gardening and combined his general knowledge with a trial-and-error approach. The tulips dwindled and the daffodils multiplied, so Richard curated the daffodils as they grew into the magnitude they are today.
Today, after four decades of curating acres of daffodils, Richard says his planting project has started to slow down. That’s because almost every available inch of the property is already home to a daffodil or a handful of purple crocus. “The only area that we have left where we could still plant them is a wooded area,” Richard says. “So, I’m pretty much done now for the most part.”
His wife, Nancy, however, says that Richard will never really be done tending to the daffodils.
“If he sees something (a flower clump that needs broken up), he’ll say: ‘I think I’ll move a few daffodils today,’” she says.
The Rasmussens love their daffodils, but what they might enjoy even more is sharing them with the community. On weekends after they bloom (generally in April and May), a steady stream of people drive down their road, and some even venture into the driveway to see what is planted beyond the road. “Once, we had a plein air artist come up because she wanted to paint them,” Nancy says. “She set up shop right at the nursery and painted most of the day. The daffodils are such a wonderful experience after the winter.”
