Passionville USA

My first garden article was about daylilies and they haven't stopped being my passion.  It’s a passion that is just now opening into bloom time.

Although there are gardeners who have special talents beyond mine and the desire to raise more difficult and quirky plants, I love the simple beauty of daylilies.

It’s like the friend we love because they loved us first.  They make it easy.  Add to its many attributes the daylily’s beauty and it’s a home run to Passionville USA.

Check out this youtube video from the American Hemerocallis Association and you’ll understand I’m not alone residing in this daylily village:   http://youtu.be/idehlULGsC4

Like a teenage girl in her first shoe shop, I can run from plant to plant wanting them all.  The traditional, the new design, the funky, and the lovely – I’m wanting at least one of each.  Cut down more trees to give them sunlight, dig up lawn to enlarge beds, squeeze in another plant under the tomatoes and don’t even think of letting me near Hornbaker Nursery in Princeton during peak bloom time.

For a beginning gardener, nothing could be easier and more gratifying than your first daylily plant.  Follow the simple planting instruction and you’ll have a lifetime of beauty year after year.  The cost of many daylilies is under $5.  The cost of the newly hybridized is getting close to $300.   Whether you shop off the rack at a big box store, visit your local nurseries or want the extended variety of on-line shopping, it’s there for the novice and the experienced.

And like a shoe addict, there is always a new daylily being hybridized and registered.  You can build your excuses for getting a new lily like sequins on a pair of platform pumps.  Colors, color variations and designs, forms, sizes, heights, cute little edges – daylilies have it all.

Daylilies can be moved often.  They often increase clump size and can be divided easily and moved to new locations, given to friends or sell as a little side industry.  It’s a plant that keeps on giving. 

Daylilies can be hybridized by the everyday gardener and is an excellent way to start your own varieties.  We’ve had some pretty awesome daylily gardeners in this very area:  Rolly Krause has been hybridizing daylilies and hosta for years.  The late Frank Conway’s daylily field was awesome in number and variety.

Be it the common Stella-de-oro or a new Jamie Gossard variety; join the bus trip to Passionville USA.  I guarantee it will be a great ride!