Daylilies for All

Siloam Double Classic

Daylily season is upon us.  Even those who can’t name many flowers recognize dayliles, those growing in glorious organce by the road side, and those in shades of cream and pink, coral, gold and deep reds and burgundies in cultivated gardens. Some daylilies have the classic simple trumpet shape and some are ruffled.  Because daylilies are so hardy as well and beautiful in their variety, many small growers sell them in full bloom, dug out of the garden right before your eyes.

Richard Willard at Silver Daylily Gardens

I bought some dayliles from Richard Willard at Silver Garden Daylilies earlier this spring. He is having another digging day on Saturday, July 10 from 9 am to 4 pm. The daylily farm is on Glenbrook Road out towards the Greenfield Pumping Station. On July 17 Richard is holding his annual Daylily Festival which will include edible daylily treats dished up by Mary Ellen and Denise of Stockbridge Herb Farm.  Pre-registration for the daylily meal ($18) is required.

Lorraine Brennan's Daylilies

Last summer daughter Kate and I visited Lorraine Brennan on Rt 10 in Northfield and bought a carload of daylilies. She is selling daylilies on July 10 and 11 from 9 to 1 pm, and again the following weekend, July 17 and 18 from 9-1 pm. Lorraine will have a sign out on the road. Don’t drive too fast.

Last year I also bought a small yellow daylily at Shelburne Farm and Garden. It is named Happy Returns. One of my Buckland library patrons gave this daylily to the library. We thought the name was just perfect for a library.

Hyperion daylily

My tall clear yellow daylily is the classic Hyperion. It was given to me by Elsa Bakalar many years ago. We are deconstructing a daylily bed and moving my favorite daylilies to the new Daylily Bank. My husband will no longer have to mow that difficult area.

The beauty of daylilies lies not only in their color and form, but in their hardiness. They are not bothered by extremes in weather. They need only ordinary soil. They are not bothered by disease or bugs. Hybridizers are coming up with varieties that bloom early and late so you can have daylilies blossoms  all summer long.

Beautiful for a Day

Hemerocallis - beautiful for a day

Lorraine Brennan is not a woman daunted by a challenge. When she and her husband bought a house by the side of the road in Northfield 20 years ago, it was surrounded by what seemed to be acres of blacktop parking lot. Now it is surrounded by what seems to be acres of garden – trees, shrubs, and perennials. Especially daylilies.

The house by the side of the road, Route 10, was perfect for Brennan’s antiques business. That location also makes it perfectly easy for garden and daylily lovers to find her Second Annual Garden Days and Daylily Sale on July 18 and 19, and July 25 and 26 from 9 am to 5 pm, each day.

Brennan said collections of antiques and daylilies eventually grow so big you just have to start selling some of them. She can name some of her daylilies, but “I just plant what I like. I don’t care about the name,” she said.

Visitors to the garden will be able to admire the gardens that are so welcoming to birds, butterflies and other wild life including foxes and raccoons. If a daylily takes their fancy they can choose one, named or not, that has already been potted up, or is growing in a nursery bed. Brennan will even dig up a clump from a garden bed, and divide it right before your eyes. “I just pop the mother plant back in the ground. It doesn’t seem to mind,” she said.

Needless to say, this is not a garden that was planned or planted all at once. After the blacktop was carted away, leaving only sand and rocks, truckloads of compost were brought in. Trees and shrubs like magnolias and viburnams were planted. Brennan’s daughter Jennifer said that when the cedar waxwings come in the fall, and light on the viburnam to eat the berries it is an amazing sight.

Jennifer is supplying a lot of the labor in the garden right now. “My mom has the big ideas, and I try to assist in managing them,” she said.

There are many shrubs including liliacs, spirea and hydrangeas. A huge climbing hydrangea nearly covers the wall of the old antique shop.

Although there is a bright and chaotic flower garden in front of the shop, it is just a taste of the perennials hidden behind the house. Here huge clumps of bright red bee balm attract the dancing hummingbirds, and the achilleas, veronicas, feverfew, artemesias and other perennials serve to frame the hundreds of daylilies.

Brennan said, “I like a garden that looks like it just dropped there. I like a natural look. That’s my own taste.”

Daylilies are the obvious favorite. Their hardiness is only one measure of their appeal. Brennan told me how she acquired one of her daylilies. “Once I saw a plastic pot with a dried out daylily in it at the dump. I asked if I could take it away, and did. When I got it home I had to break the pot with a hammer and then had to smash the soil, it was baked like cement. That daylily still blooms in the garden. I’ve labeled it Dump Daylily.”

Brennan can say that daylilies will adapt to any soil, and she is right that they will survive anywhere. It is also true that we have to remember all the compost that has been brought in, and the compost pile that they make themselves. Caring for our soil, feeding our soil, is the best way to insure success in the garden.

There is color and bloom in the garden all through the season, but in mid-July the garden is an explosion of daylily color. There are pale varieties, sunny yellow varieties and lots of pinks and reds, which happen to be my favorites. It is a sight to behold, and you are all invited.

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Garden Open Today! That has to be one of the happiest notices a gardener can see.

There are other open gardens this weekend. On Sunday, July 19, from 10 am to 3 pm ten gardens in the New Salem area will be open to benefit the Millers River Environmental Center. There will be gardens of every sort, including shade gardens, water gardens, and butterfly gardens, just the kind of welcoming gardens I would expect from bird and nature lovers. Many will also offer spectacular views of the Quabbin. Tickets (suggested donation $5 each or $15 for a carload) are available at the New Salem General Store on Route 202 or Hamilton’s Orchard on West Street. For more information contact Susan Heinricher 978-544-6372 or gardens@millersriver.net.

This tour is organized by the Athol Bird and Nature Club; members will be hand in the gardens to answers questions about birds, butterflies and more.

Those who want to make a comfortable day of touring can buy lunch at the New Salem General Store and Hamilton’s Orchard.

July 18, 2009  Between the Rows

The Most Important Crop

Ty, Major, Rory, Betsy

No matter how devoted we are to our gardens, most of us would admit that the most important crop we tend is the children in our lives. The Major and I are happy to let the gardens take a back seat to grandson pleasures on these cool summer days.  We had to say farewell to Tynan, but we met our daughter Betsy and her older son, Rory, in Amherst for lunch and a ‘backyard circus at the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Tim Van Egmond

Tim Van Egmond was the star performer at the ‘circus’ singing songs, playing instruments and telling stories like why mosquitoes buzz in people’s ears. But there were games, and hat making and free kazoos.  I got mine.

Ty on stilts

Both boys tried to use the stilts. It is very hard.

We bid farewell to Ty and Betsy, but went on to an elegant barbecue with friends. After so much excitement we were happy to spend Sunday  taking care of the chickens, weeding the garden, picking sugar snap peas and visiting our neighbor Sheila and her goats.

Sheila invited us down to visit the goats at milking time.  Rory got to feed the goats, haul water, and give them a little brushing.  For his efforts he got a kiss.  And Sheila sent us home with some delicious chevre (that’s what you call fresh goat cheese) that she made herself.

Today we went to Northfield to visit Lorraine Brennan and her daughter Jennifer. Lorraine has beautiful gardens with so many daylilies in so many colors that she is about to hold her Second Annual Open Garden and Daylily Sale on July 18 & 19, and 25 & 26.  Of course, she has many other shrubs, trees and perennials, where once there was only a blacktop parking lot.  There is no question that gardeners produce miracles.

And that is this week’s Monday Report.