Daylilies Rediscovered: Colorful, shapely and strong, these old standbys prove their worth
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DAYLILIES AREN'T fussy, delicate, variegated, brown-leafed or hard to find. No wonder they aren't trendy. Where's the challenge if anybody can grow them well?
They do, however, define garden-worthiness with their distinctive, sword-like foliage and long-blooming flowers in an exciting range of colors and shapes. Combining daylilies with other flowers and foliage in the garden remains enough of a challenge for me. I'm sure many more sophisticated effects are possible, but velvety purple `Georgette Beldon' is striking in front of a smoke bush and alongside the steely-blue foliage of Rosa glauca, and a dark-green planting of yew can be lightened up by installing a ruffled ivory-colored `Tender Love' in front.
Daylilies aren't really lilies but hardy perennials, growing from roots rather than bulbs. They are in the genus Hemerocallis, a Greek word meaning "beauty for a day" in reference to each individual flower's short lifespan.
While daylilies have a naturalistic look reminiscent of growing unrestrained along Midwest roadsides, they were first mentioned in a Chinese medical book in 2697 B.C. Daylilies were considered a great prize during the heyday of 18th- and 19th-century plant exploration, collected in the wilds of China and brought back to Europe and America, where they were illustrated and described in the early herbals.
One reason the study of plants is so fascinating is that the history and future of many species hang on the obsession of one person. In the case of daylilies, that person was Arlow B. Stout, an early director of the New York Botanical Garden. Stout's enthusiasm was fed by his friend Albert Steward, who taught botany at the University of Nanking, collecting daylilies in their natural habitats and sending them to Stout in New York. Stout grew, studied and hybridized hundreds of species, and his 1934 book "Daylilies" is still the definitive reference. The human hand rests heavily upon daylilies, and hybrids are pretty much all that is available in commerce today.
The good news is that the human imagination has been given full play in daylily breeding. How to resist `Vanilla Fluff' (its name is its description), `Shady Lady,' a lemon-yellow with plum brushmark, or `Double Corsage,' a dependable rebloomer with deep pink ruffles and seersucker edges. Each is available from Snow Creek Daylily Gardens (aka B&D Lilies) in Port Townsend, where the display gardens are in full bloom by midsummer.
Owner Diana Gibson advises planting daylilies in as much sun as possible, and giving them an inch of water per week their first summer. "Then just stand back," she says, laughing. Clumps need dividing every three to four years or the blooms will decline. Gibson cuts back even the evergreen kinds in late fall, to get a fresh flush of foliage and to prevent slugs and snails from hiding in the old leaves. To keep daylilies blooming, and looking tidy, they should be deadheaded daily. (Yeah, sure.)
Gibson is most excited about `Hood Snows,' the first true pale pink that doesn't turn orange or peachy in our climate. (Daylilies stay a true pink in the south, but our cool weather tends to bring out their muddy tints.) She also admires `Frans Hals,' a transformer of a daylily that ranges from peach through yellow and burnt orange over a long season of bloom, and `Henrietta,' a lavender-purple with crisp foliage.
The distinctive daylilies called spiders are coming back into fashion after years of hybridizers concentrating on breeding shorter, blowsier types. These older, graceful plants bring an animation to the garden with narrow-petaled flowers held on wiry stems high enough above the foliage to wave gently in the breeze. The yellow ruffled `Green Tarantula' and `Apricot Spider,' with buttery petals and bronze reverse, are elegant examples of this "everything old is new again" trend. I've lined the lower edges of my back garden with heirloom daylilies, and love the casual, colorful look they bring to this wild area at the height of summer.
(Snow Creek Daylily Gardens, 284566 Highway 101, Port Townsend, WA 98368; 360-765-4341; www.snowdaylily.com)
Now In Bloom:
The twine, flower and sweet scent of honeysuckle is a midsummer pleasure. The Dutch honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum 'Serotina' is especially fragrant with creamy white flowers streaked in vivid purple-pink.
Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. She is co-author of "Artists in Their Gardens" from Sasquatch Books. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com.
Valerie Easton will be a featured speaker at the Northwest Horticultural Society's Summer Symposium at the Museum of History and Industry on Saturday, July 21, 8:30 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. For more information, or to register for "An Eden of One's Own: Innovative Design for Residential Gardens," call the society at 206-527-1794.