Primrose leaves

I don't know if I did the right thing, but my primroses had so much leaves that you could barely see the flowers. They have been flowering for a few weeks, and the flowers haven't been very visible, so as I was generally tidying up the garden I pulled off a lot of the leaves, which revealed a lot of flowers that had been hidden. There were a lot of underside leaves that had turned white or even brown, so they weren't contributing to photosynthesis for the plant. Some leaves were even covered in greenfly.

It had got to the point where I was willing to risk the primroses not flowering any more, as there was little to lose.

Afterwards I noticed a bee enjoying the primrose flowers, and I haven't been noticing a lot of bees so far this year. Maybe the bee couldn't find the flowers either under all those leaves?

Is it ok to cut back primrose leaves? And why do they make such a lot of leaves so that the flowers are hidden?

 

I've been doing the same, I don't know why the flowers are under the leaves other than they may have been forced (if they're newly bought plants)

 

My primroses aren't newly bought plants, I grew them from seed two years ago. I seem to remember last year the flowers were more visible, though after flowering I did cut the leaves back a lot because they were taking over, and they did keep growing back again.

 

Maybe the soil is too rich in nitrogen??