I say I leave the foliage until it starts to brown. I can do this because my beds are sufficiently full of plants that new growth quickly hides the daffodil leaves. Life is too short to go round cutting down foliage from multiple daffs. Green foliage is still working hard for the bulbs and the dying leaves return their nutrients to the soil.

Are you familiar with variants of 'moah is bettuh?' I'm sure that you may get some blooms from trimming the foliage, but if you want more blooms, you leave it the **** alone till it dies. It's not there to just look pretty, eh ?

Plant smart, plant daffodils among plants that come up late, esp vigorous late foliage, like maybe Joe Pye Weed? Underplant non-dense shrubs with daffodils. Ignore the foliage, it's the cost of the flowers.

I leave mine for 6 weeks after they bloom. After 6 weeks I cut it off if I need to make room for other plants or if it just looks bad.

I never [plant narcissus anywhere other than naturalised in grass. Whilst I am happy to include a number of bulbs in with my other mixed beds, the sordid look of narcissus foliage is not to be borne. I am unable to hide the rank looking dying leaves because my plants tend to be low-growing and compact in April/May ( although the average height and lushness tends to increase as the season progresses). Also, I have small beds...not generous herbaceous borders...and since I like to see narcissus in abundant stands, not in 2 or 3 or even single bulbs, it isn't tenable, putting up with 12-20 dying bulbs in full sight in a little flower bed...unlike the fortnight of irritation, putting up with tulips leaves, for example.

While I do leave the bulbs to die back in the grass, I whip the flowers off as soon as they go over, using shears (or a strimmer, for large drifts). This definitely improves the overall look (especially with multi-headed tazettas such as Geranium), and also prevents resources being used on seed production.

I too am a scrupulous dead-header of daffodil seed pods.

perhaps this approach?

saw it years ago in a public park, former garden show thingy (though my personal hunch is that the gardener who did this is retired by now)

edited to mention: it was always my gut feeling that this cant be too good for the bulbs and in my opinion is a posterchild/ symbol for

"old school" gardening with a heavy emphasize on tidyness

as my garden grew in size.. i came to the decision that i touched a plant the least number of times possible..

if i knew i had to come back to remove old dead foliage.. i had too much garden to come back every other week or so to massage them..

in a smaller garden.. i did braid them once or twice.. i didnt go blind ... i did so to plant the petunia and annuals.. etc... just to get the foliage out of the way...

ken

Ah, I don't have ferns or hellebores (and the geraniums are all much too late) in my home garden. Everything is still really quite tiny (primulas, aubrieta, minuscule campanulas, saxifrage) so I only grow the little hoop petticoats and a few snowdrops at home. I don't have any spring bulbs in the little raised beds (because the hyacinths are even worse than the narcissus), and really mostly grow tulips in the vegetable beds at the allotment and other bulbs amongst the ramblers. It is in the woods where narcissus have really come into their own, where I can leave the foliage for as long as I like cos they are in great drifts in rapidly elongating grass.

I guess we are all trying to get variety and beauty in whatever space we have available to us and for me, in a very small courthouse type garden, I have gone for a sort of layered look where the height and lushness of the beds increases as the year progresses, until it is all a bit of a towering, impassable (but very floriferous) jungle, by the end of September/October, while a lot of early flowering plants are dormant underneath the canopy.

eta - actually, this is a lie - I do have asplenium, holly fern and rusty-backed fern, along with Japanese anemones and saxefrage fortuneii, in a long, very thin border (40cm) running to the back gate. This is all that is in the bed so it is essentially mostly green, largely ignored and does it's thing reliably every year. I would die of boredom though, if my whole garden was dominated by just 3 types of plants.

'What say you?'

I like my bulbs to have maximum benefit so I don't remove any of their leaves, no matter how dead, dry or scruffy they become. The way I see it, even toasted leaves could be supplying something to the storage facility. And if not that, then the soil.

'I too am a scrupulous dead-header of daffodil seed pods.'

Shock, horror.

I fertilise my daffodil flowers to produce them. I luuurve playing with the seeds and wondering what I will get. Gives me seven years of excitement followed by only one day of disappointment.

'perhaps this approach?'

No, never.

Daffodil blindness. Never heard of that so had a quick look at the link. But daffodil bulbs that don't produce a flower I would have thought are just too small yet to do so.