Four years ago I decided to expand our daylily (Hemerocallis) plantings and made a long bed in the cutting garden (above), supplementing it on either end in the following years with some dwarf daylilies and unusual colors.  Not that we weren't blessed with plenty of daylilies. The ones I planted years ago have increased exponentially. They are orange, like those above only lighter, with very long scapes (the flowering stems), and without the darker stripe. I've divided them many times over as they spread to crowd out roses planted nearby, gave many away, and moved the rest to various parts of the garden. These old ones, massed together and all the same color, were – and are – a wonderful sight in  mid July.

Daylilies evidently love the soil here in Northern Utah, which is alkaline, though they tolerate just about any soil. What's more important, they are tolerant of drought. Although I don't recall the name of these daylilies – I planted them at least 25 years ago – there are thousands of named cultivars to choose from in nurseries and catalogs today. In fact, the magnitude of choices can sometimes be bewildering.

Cultivation and Varieties

Daylilies are one of the easiest plants to grow in the garden, in both sunny  and partly shady spots. The stiff scapes shoot up with many buds on their ends, each bud turning into a bloom, which lasts a day, followed by another and another; and this goes on over a period of weeks during the height of summer. Some of ours bloom into the fall – 'Stella de Oro', for instance, and the small rebloomer, 'Child of  Fortune', shown at left.

This pink daylily has a three-inch wide blossom with a 15-inch pillow of narrow green leaves underneath. It first blooms here during June and July with occasional blooms during August. The arrangement of petals and sepals can be seen clearly in this one, three petals on top, three sepals underneath.

The clear yellow Stella de Oro has been a long-time favorite with gardeners since it was introduced in the mid 1970s. Wonderful as a separate plant in pots, it can also be arranged in mass, its three-inch blooms bursting out starting in may on eighteen-inch scapes and, if kept dead-headed (pinching off the day-old, wilted flowers), continuing until frost. My daughter, Melanie, planted the one we have in our brick graden outside the study window about eight years ago, and it has proved reliable through the most appalling weather here imaginable.

I added a 'Black Eyed Stella' three or four years ago. The eye isn't actually black, rather dark brown, but it's still a standout, and the foliage is a lovely dark green which stays fresh looking throughout the season.

Another yellow popped up last year in the brick herb garden which I think may be 'Mary Todd'.  I'd received a big box of daylilies I'd ordered in January or February, and must have put a couple of them in the brick herb garden and completely forgot abut them. My daughter, Melanie,  called my attention to an enormous yellow daylily blooming its heart out right outside the study window. She said, "Mom you've got to take a photo of this!"

The blossoms were enormous, five or six inches across, with wider petals than sepals, as you can see in the photo to the right. The yellow is so vivid it seems lit from the inside. Notice that the petals and sepals are spread rather wide apart, unlike the pink 'Child of Fortune' above.

The pale peach daylily, in the parlor garden in front of the house, is an old one. It was one of the first daylilies I planted when the parlor was first finished as an add-on. This was around 1985, I think. The clump of three increased so in size, I dug one complete clump out to give away to a friend who had just moved into a newly built house. The variety is lost to the mists of time, but I remember from which nursery I got it  – White Flower Farm in Connecticut. The color is soft, as you can see in the photo below left, and the flowers are prolific, blooming for at least a month from late June onwards on strong scapes of about two and a half inches in height.

A Bit of History

Our daylily has been referred to in the 1800s by the common name, "Cow Lily", since it was often found growing wild in New England pastures. In the language of flowers, which was generally known among readers in the same era, the daylily is generally called "secret sighs" (the yearning to please) or "coquettery" depending on the reference.

Emily Dickinson, on the occasion of his first visit to her house, presented to the Transcendalist, essayist, poet, and Unitarian minister, T. W. Higginson, with two daylilies. Higginson had been a mentor of Dickenson's and an admirer of her poetry. He was also a good friend to have. According to Judith Farr, in her book, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson, she most likely proffered the flowers as "thanks ... for his letters and concern," something she was in the habit of doing.

Farr goes on, "Perhaps they were also a plea made by an unknown writer to a famous man." It turned out that he might well have known the symbol of the daylily as couquettery since, as Farr points out, Higginson wrote later, in a memoir of Dickinson, "that on that August afternoon when they met, the decorous spinster entertained him with a charm and 'skill such as the most experienced and worldly coquette might envy.'"

The name, "Cow Lily", by the way, was given to the daylily because of the nodding of its flowers in the pastures in which they grew, the nodding being much like a cow bell. Among her friends, Farr tells us, Dickinson called herself the cowbell (normally in shades of orange) because of the "orange  lights in her hair and eyes."

The daylily is a favorite for cottage gardens, flowering for many weeks above lower growing flowers like the delicate leaved and yellow flowered Corydalis lutea; Tanacetum parthenium, common name feverfew, with its white button flowers; and Centranthus, common names red valerian or jupiter's beard. Most of our beds at DragonGoose Farm are cottage garden types, with one or more flowers dominating. Below, for instance, is a mixed bed of the old orange daylilies, with feverfew, some couple of red valerians toward the end, and some light blue Delphinium at the far end.

 We're snow-locked in up here in northern Utah and it looks almost impossible that the snow will be gone before 100 apple trees arrive to be planted in the north orchard in mid April. It's become even more worrisome since we've got to get the electric fence extended before we plant the trees.

Well, all we can do is wait and hope for good weather. When we planted the older trees in that orchard –  that was eight or nine years ago –  we nearly froze our tails off.

Best from DragonGoose Farm,

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Photos - Joan Katherine Shaw

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