I only grow the gold lace group. I prefer their coloring in my garden and I too do not have a great site for primulas otherwise. Too dry for much of the year for anything other than the polyanthus hybrids.

Ah, I will be planting mine about 1 metre away from the outdoor tap...and eldest has sworn to finish the drip irrigation set-up at home. I am not terribly hopeful about the survival of last years japonicas at the allotment. They had been grown for a customer who went and sold his house, so I had to plant and hope. A wet spring might see me through, then onwards to dormancy. I have quite a lot of risky plants though.

P. denticulata

I love them but a second season out of anything is a surprise considering my soil and climate must be even more wrong than yours. I have found the cowslip can survive in the right spot, and old, nearly wild forms of polyanthus and vulgaris if you don't forget them during the summer, but what really thrives here are Primula sieboldii. They enjoy a soggy spring and then go dormant when summer gets hot and dry. I actually thinned them out last year and they're coming back as thick as ever in their part shade location.

A wet spring might see me through

Just curious @rosaprimula UK (Cambridge) Z8/9, what has the precip been like the first 3 weeks of March...more, less or about as is usual for the month of March?

Loads wetter than usual. Getting a bit fed up with it now. On a plus note though, my spring bulbs are gearing up for a top display. One really dry year, the tulips were all over in what seemed like a week, but right now, primrose and anemones are managing to stay ahead of the meadow grasses and, after the incredibly hot and dry summer and rampant rose pruning, the tulips are promising an excellent showing.

P. sieboldii have been on my try-out list but will have to contend with the hurly-burly of the open allotment as I have not an inch of room for yet another spring pot display. Every year, I swear I am cutting back on auriculas but they are so exuberant, I cannot stay on top of the continual thinning and removal of offsets, I often consider releasing them to the open ground but I really do not care for multi-colour displays of primulas one bit (unless displayed as fantastical single pot-plants for close scrutiny and sniffing). I reserve my especial dislike for the lurid poily's which are ubiquitous between now and Easter).

You should definitely try out primula sieboldii, I love it. Here’s mine blooming today next to my pond.

O, lovely, Heruga - they are delightful in every aspect. I was intimidated by primula for a long time until concentrating on the easy Europeans - vieris, elatior, vulgaris and my beloved auriculas. I grew a few for customers (japonica, wilsonii, bulleyana and florindae) and realised how generally easy they are, to raise from seed. I absolutely have sieboldii on my list (always seed available from the Hardy Plant Soc. seedlists). I planted quite a few japonicas at the allotment (and magically jinxed the weather because we have had 3x the usual rainfall this March). I may even get a decent showing from them...which has prompted me to grow trollius europaeus (loads nicer than t.chinensis). Making a no doubt futile promise to especially irrigate the raised bed.

The pond looks great too - I am extending my minuscule one in the garden and definitely contemplating building a much bigger one at the allotment. What are your plans?

I tried growing these from seed once and failed. One germinated but then quickly died from the heat. I didn’t wintersow these in the milk jugs, not sure if germination rates would be better if I did it that way for this primula since the majority of my successful perennials that I grew from seed were wintersown. But if you grew all those other primulas then I’m sure you will find a way to grow them. Weirdly enough P. sieboldii seeds weren’t available anywhere in the u.s that time so I had to order it from Europe for a big fee. I may as well harvest seeds from mine this year.

Oh I’m pretty much done with all my pond. I have enough plants and everything already in and around it. If thats what you were asking.

I have to treat Primulas as an annual. I love them but they don't really come back for more than a season or two at the most. I have a dry property due to a lot of trees sucking the moisture out of everything.

Yep, primulas have to be given especial treatment - either extra irrigation or pot-grown (a lot of them do very well in pots). I am an absolute primula novice though - there are around 30 different divisions (narcissus has 13) so I am growing the tiniest minority so far. I do think I could fall into an obsessive collecting mindset but the thought of inevitable deaths does stay my hand a bit.

Definitely harvest your own seed, Heruga - fresh seed is almost guaranteed germination. I now have hundreds of chionantha awaiting pricking out, from seeds from the Hardy Plant Soc. I have mentioned this before but will reiterate - joining a plant society is a terrific way to share seed between members. An annual subscription to the Hardy Plant Soc is around $20 and will entitle overseas members to at least 25 packets of free seeds. Have a look at this years seedlist - around 3000 varieties, harvested from members own gardens.

https://www.hardy-plant.org.uk/about-plants/seed/ordering-seed/descriptive-seed-list