Windyhill Daylily Garden

Our Garden

As I have said before, we started with a clean slate, and a vision as you see in the below left photo. When I stopped at the top of the hill and looked down for the first time, within a minute I had a vision in my mind that was pretty close to what we have put together over the last few years. The first three years I was still working, so progress was slow going, but we did get the house built as well as walls for the courtyard and patio beside and behind the house. In the spring of 2012 I retired. My first task was to get the beds in the courtyard, below the courtyard, and patio ready for Wanda to start planting her perennial gardens. Now, they have matured into a haven for birds and butterflies. In the summer time, with six to ten Hummingbird feeders out on the back porch, the courtyard is home to 100 or more hummingbirds much of the summer. Although Wanda has a good eye for the perennial gardens, as well as a growing hybridizing interest, she is best known locally as “The Hummingbird Lady”. A title she is delighted to have earned. We end many afternoons there, and amazingly, they whiz by all the time but have never hit us. A couple years ago, one did hit my hand when I was working outside. It was like being hit by a cottonball. He was not phased by the collision. 

During the years we were building the perennial gardens, a pond, and a second garage for all the tools and toys, daylilily hybridizing kinda took a back seat. They did look a bit sad as they were enclosed by plastic deer fence to keep those big varmints away. They were in prison!! We tried everything, from smelly spray, to sensor sprayers and everything in between. They all worked. For about 2 weeks!!! Did any work all the way through bloom season?  NO!! At least the daylilies we were hybridizing with were inside the deer fence. In 2016, we fenced in everything except our front yard. The difference was amazing. We knew they were eating all the things the books say they will eat, but they were also eating many perennials the books say they will not eat. Then they go for the daylily buds for desert!! The garden grew more in the next year than it had in the previous four years. Between 2016 and 2017 we built our daylily display area. It looked pretty good for our 2017 regional tour, but as expected it has looked better each succeeding year. We registered it as a AHS Display garden in 2019. We welcome you to stop by and visit. 

Welcome to Windyhill Garden
The garden house with ‘Mister Butters’ showing his stuff (2019)
The display garden from across the pond
The third year for most of these. The bloom was prolific.
The Japanese iris was beautiful this year, blooming with the daylilies.

Daylily gardens are different each day, but always beautiful.
2/20/2020: Our first winter snow for 2020. Wanda got this picture of our courtyard outside the side entry door. It is really cool how the flash highlighted the snowflakes coming down. It looks like a photo for a Christmas card.
Winter 2019/2020: Our stone creek bed and waterfall will transform this corner of the pond. It had collected some silt run-of during the time I was landscaping and laying sod in the upper section near the house. Part of the project was to remove the accumulated silt and weeds growing in the pond.
Ya gotta start somewhere. The start of the upper portion of the creek bed. It will have water running in it continuously as well as rain run-off from the upper areas of the garden. Further down is the start of a cobblestone bridge over the creek.
Well, to get the silt out and clean up that corner of the pond, they brought in the “Big Boy Toy”. And it was bigger than it looks here. LIKE HUGE!! We finished digging with Big Boy about 3:00pm on 1/31/2020. It started raining before we completed loading it and now in late February, it has rained about every other day since then. A muddy mess at the moment!!

Only a hint of what it will be. If it ever stops raining and snowing enough to dry out some we will be ready to start making progress again. Until then, we have to remind ourselves that Mother Nature is the boss. Until then, we will dream and plan for what it will be. We did just order some Japanese Iris that we will plant along this creek bed.