Daylilies that Dazzle

My interest in daylilies began more than four decades ago. But I took an unlikely journey that saw a plant breeder and a large wholesale nursery forge a partnership to develop a successful daylily production business aimed at helping the garden centers with new product lines.

In 1987, my position at a large botanical garden was eliminated. Armed with a Ph.D. and experience as a state specialist in ornamental horticulture at the University of Kentucky and as associate professor of horticulture at Penn State (where I taught a course in garden center management), I was ready to move from academia to business.

Daylily passion
Realizing that my passion was breeding daylilies, I focused on turning what was a fascinating pastime into a full-time vocation. Prior to this, I had moderate success as a daylily hybridizer and had released several cultivars through the American Daylily Society publications. I was keenly aware that the 3-week bloom season on most daylilies was far too short. I purposely set out to breed reblooming daylilies. The process involved identifying and obtaining any plant that was mentioned as a rebloomer. Unfortunately, there were not many around in those early years.

The same year I lost my job, ‘Happy Returns’ was chosen as a front cover picture on Wayside Garden’s catalog by horticulture director John Elsley. Roy Klehm of Klehm’s nursery grew the plants for me and was the Wayside supplier. ‘Happy Returns’ is a great-looking plant, but its main feature was that it bloomed as much as 15 weeks each year. Two years later, in 1989, I introduced ‘Pardon Me,’ which also made the front cover for Wayside Gardens. Within days several nurseries purchased and started to produce these two plants.

Happy happenstance
Meanwhile, I was lecturing on long-blooming perennials and devoting one segment to long-blooming daylily cultivars. Shortly after one of my lectures at a New Jersey nursery, I was contacted by Denny Blew, owner of the New Jersey-based Centerton Nursery. After visiting my private garden in Pennsylvania and seeing several hundred modern daylilies, he asked if I’d help him develop a program with new lines of daylilies.

While we began to cultivate this idea, I decided to venture out and start a daylily nursery. In 1993 my wife Marilyn and I purchased 8 acres near Bridgeton, N.J., and began Woodside Nursery. Our goals were to breed new daylilies, evaluate cultivars for wholesale production, sell bare-root plants through a mail order catalog, offer plants wholesale, and develop a container operation for summer retail sales. Within a few years, with additional rental land, we had more than 10 acres of daylilies and nearly 2,200 different cultivars.

We learned quickly which daylilies over-wintered in containers, how rapidly they increased, production regimes to produce the best plants, and which had the most appeal to our customers. We also developed a display garden that showed daylilies with other plants and eventually helped sell other perennials and shrubs to make garden combinations. Each year our nursery grew and was profitable. The bare-root daylily catalog had only modest success because customers were unwilling to wait a full year before their bare root plants bloomed.

C’mon in
Our nursery was in the farm country of South Jersey, which I always described as “in the middle of nowhere.” Our real advantage was the large surrounding population centers of Philadelphia, New York City, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and the nearby Atlantic City beach communities. Almost all our customers drove at least an hour to find us.

We developed summer events and called them “Daylily Dazzles.” Our peak bloom time was usually the first week of July, and events were usually held on a Saturday before or after July 4th and two weeks later. We teamed with two other nurseries for one of the Saturdays and called our new event a nursery “Open House Day” and “Daylily Dazzle.”
To market these events each year we sent a news release to about 100 Eastern United States papers announcing the “Daylily Dazzle” and our “Open Houses” and touted the opportunity for customers to walk the nursery fields. The events grew rapidly. By 2005 more than 500 gardeners attended each event. With my confidence buoyed, I assisted Denny Blew and Centerton Nursery in selecting daylilies for their production program.

An exciting breakthrough daylily that will be released in 2010 is Jersey EarlyBird ‘Cardinal.’ It is a beautiful clear red that starts blooming about the same time or earlier than ‘Stella de Oro.’ Picky picky
In addition to our own seedling crops, we’d buy thousands of dollars worth of new daylilies from other hybridizers each year – then grow and evaluate them. We set up several benchmarks:
• Selections had to be distinct and show the beauty of modern introductions.
• They had to be winter-hardy enough to overwinter in containers in unheated houses.
• Selection had to increase at a rate of 5:1 or more each year.
• Plants had to bloom for 45 days or more.
• They had to have clean deep-green foliage all season long.

Getting the first thousand plants was time-consuming. When my staff and I found good plants we’d set them aside and build up 50 or more plants by aggressively using crown cottage. Then we’d send them to Centerton for more increase.

Meanwhile, Denny Blew at Centerton Nursery selected Trophytaker as the company’s trademark name for these northern-grown daylilies, and created large labels that displayed how-to information and colorful images of each cultivar.

Challenges and success stories
One of my great challenges as a hybridizer continues to be developing daylilies that rebloom two to three times, or almost continuously, each summer. We learned that the sales appeal of reblooming daylilies is many times that of the fanciest cultivars. Selections such as ‘Happy Returns,’ ‘Rosy Returns,’ ‘Apricot Sparkles,’ ‘Big Time Happy,’ and ‘Stephanie Returns’ are excellent container choices even into USDA Zone 4. A second Centerton trademark was developed for these rebloomers and called Happy Ever Appster — improvised from my last name.

An exciting breakthrough daylily due out in 2010 is Jersey EarlyBird ‘Cardinal.’ It is a beautiful clear red that starts blooming about the same time or earlier than ‘Stella de Oro.’ It is an evergreen daylily that survives cold winters and looks great even in USDA Zone 4.

Based on my experience and the exciting responses we’re seeing in the marketplace for early bloomers, there is a huge opportunity for garden centers that sell reblooming daylilies. The new color breaks and better flower forms continue to expand the potential for great sellers in garden centers for years to come.

Moving on
At the end of 2007, at age 69, I decided to sell the Woodside Nursery name and all of the daylilies to Denny Blew’s two sons, Robert and Donald. It’s heartwarming to know that from a young age Robert Blew’s particular interest was daylilies. Today he’s using my breeding lines to continue to develop new rebloom daylilies, and this year he will bloom more than 45,000 seedlings.

The nursery and property sale gave my wife and me an opportunity to move back to our home town of Wild Rose, Wis. Here in Wild Rose, my passion for daylilies hasn’t diminished. I’m currently developing some short reblooming plants. The former days of attempting 30,000 seedlings a year has been drastically cut to a manageable 2,000, which finally allows a little time for fishing!