KEITH Chapman reminded us not to damage York's magnificent annual daffodil display on the city wall embankments (Letters, March 8).

I read in a local history book that the daffodil-planting tradition was begun by Backhouse nurseries.

This early Victorian garden centre occupied a site just inside one corner of the city wall between Toft Green and North Street. They began to plant daffodils locally outside the walls as an advertisement for their nearby business.

When George Hudson planned York's first railway station on the site, Backhouses sold up and moved their nursery to what was then a greenfield site in Holgate, just off the present Acomb Road.

This site has since become West Bank Park.

I do not know who continued, and extended, the planting tradition along the rest of the city walls but it is a lovely legacy.

Not far from West Bank Park, local residents planted daffodil bulbs in the green surround of Holgate Windmill last year.

I pedal past there daily and it is pleasure to see them blooming.

Paul Hepworth,

Windmill Rise,

Holgate, York.

Updated: 11:35 Saturday, March 12, 2005