Like so many of us, I can put a day and place to when I discovered daylilies. In 1988, my mom, Irene Quinn, who had already discovered hybrid daylilies, and our local daylily club, talked me into taking her to four daylily gardens in eastern NC one day. At our last stop, the garden owner, Mrs Sheffeld in Warsaw, NC, explained how daylilies were named, and how to make crosses to make new and different daylilies. I bought eight from her that day, four with names and four without names. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. Just a few years before, Wanda and I had built our house in the woods. No sunshine!! That had to go. Boy did I have a lot to learn. At our new sunny location, further south in Fuquay-Varina, NC, we built a beautiful daylily garden in three years. Wanda, who was becoming the perennial expert, was now engaged and adding other perennials to give the garden year round interest. We became good friends with Jim Cooper, a way past AHS president, who knew EVERYBODY. We traveled together to many beautiful gardens and a lot of hybridizer gardens during that time. We were bringing home every pretty daylily we could find east of the Mississippi river. But, we had not yet learn the lesson that daylilies like LOTS of water. Very quickly, dragging hoses everywhere lost its appeal. Yes, we still had a lot to learn.
From there, the saga continued as we teamed up with our good friends Noel and Molly Weston and moved all our daylilies to what is now Lakeview Daylily Farm. Lakeview quickly became the go-to sales garden in the Raleigh NC area for beautiful daylilies. We shared a lot of daylilies with a lot of folks in the area. But, no time to hybridize. Still learning!! Spending time around Noel during this time was a tremendous learning experience, more valuable than any Horticultural degree could have provided. He knew more about plants than just about anyone anywhere and very willingly shared his knowledge.
With a vision in mind for what we wanted to do, we wanted our next stop to be our last one. A perennial garden for Wanda, and a special place for daylilies and hybridizing for me. After many months of searching, we found the right location. It was a blank canvas, but the location was perfect for our vision. Now, after turning that blank canvas into a home and garden, we are pretty close to having the perennial garden we want, as well as a daylily garden and plenty of space for seedlings. And, it has water everywhere with a pond for watering the daylilies every day. As we resumed hybridizing, we headed toward round, big, and purple, but have now settled in to focus on UF’s, both dips and tets, with Wandas’ interest in small flowers, both round and especially small UF’s, as well as a beautiful perennial garden for birds, bees, and butterflies. The garden is close to where we want it now, although still working on the stone creek run and waterfall by the pond with more beds around them. Now, how to manage what we have created. If we can just find those weeding elves we will be good-to-go…
The blank canvas in fall of 2008
Summer of 2017, Region 15 tour
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