Years ago at a Perennial Plant Society meeting in Nashville one of the high end local designers gave a talk, and the most memorable thing he said was ” If someone makes fun of you for having orange daylilies in your garden your response to this should be ‘It’s MY garden’. “
This is true. And if you want four hundred bearded irises, dozens of peonies, and daylilies alone you should plant what you want. Your garden is private space.
The old orange daylily is one the spirits of the New England , whether it has gone feral at a woodland verge, planted along white picket fences, or wandering along the back roads like the vagabond it is. I love it.
Yet in the flower beds at the Goffstown Historical Society there are few daylilies. Not planting them en mass was deliberate, for while daylilies are supreme in American gardens and seen everywhere and home gardeners collect them and gas stations plant them in islands , I will paraphrase the late Henry Mitchell and say that I believe that daylilies are like ultimatums and should be used sparingly. And I have planted accordingly.
Where grooming is next to Godliness in a garden, daylilies are daily work. Their leaves yellow, their blossoms must be deadheaded , and if they have been planted in squads in the middle or rear of a public garden someone has to wade into the garden to clean them, imperiling all else that grows.
They also believe in Manifest Destiny. Their clumps know no boundaries and soon the garden is theirs while their clumps drag along vetch and grass and rumex with them.
The daylily in the photo above is “Jolene Nichole”. She is planted in our Sunset garden bed. She would be perfect if her flower was in proportion to her size, which is dwarf, but her color is so fine she keeps her place. I also have clumps of a brick colored variety in both porch beds. It was the only plant in the garden when I renovated it other than some forgotten white irises. The iris are gone, but I kept the lily. I also added the heirloom yellow daylily I posted about recently.
I confess that I have been tempted by the daylily catalogues. By the cantaloupe and salmon colors. By the frilly daylilies the color of orange sherbet-.
I do not indulge because I can see these anywhere. I see them as I see private gardens and as I look at the photos posted on garden club web pages posted by infatuated owners.
Though the daylily is now in undisputed ruler of American gardens, I wish that my fellow gardeners could look beyond daylilies into the beauty of asters, goldenrods, persicarias, patrina, and the hardy old time chrysanthemums. To give some space to heirloom cannas, to Kiss-me -over -the garden gate and the old timey garden Balsams.
How impoverished are our gardens when we see only the expected.
The above is a photo of the Swamp milkweeds in the new Modified Meadow “Robert Frost Tuft of Flowers garden”. The planting surrounds rusted iron antique farm machines.
Gardening On Granite 