“Slow Gardener” Felder Rushing’s Favorite Daylily

        I’ve been reading and savoring Slow Gardening, Felder Rushing’s new book in which he promotes – in his typically humorous, down-to-earth style – a “no-stress philosophy” of gardening that’s meant to help you follow your bliss in the garden and not worry so much about what the experts and your neighbors might say. Felder has always been a big fan of heirloom plants “rescued from the compost heap of fashion,” and in a chapter titled “Plants – The Real Deal” he sings the praises of one of our best-selling daylilies: “My all-time favorite daylily is the old double orange ‘Kwanso’, grown for eons as a nutritious food (more vitamins than broccoli!) and actually mass-planted outside the royal gardens at Kew in London. Though nearly impossible to find in a daylily-society display, it grows for me, you, anybody, anywhere, with absolutely no demands. None.” You don’t have to be a slow gardener to appreciate a plant like that! (Oct. 2011)

‘Luxury Lace’ and Edna Spalding’s Kitchen Knife

        Great garden plants come from all sorts of people, including this Louisiana housewife who John Peat and Ted Petit profile in The Daily: A Guide for Gardeners (2004):
        “Edna Spalding of Iowa, Louisiana, was an early breeder of daylilies (including ‘Luxury Lace’) who made formidable contributions..... Daylilies shared space in the vegetable garden of this housekeeper..... She had the strong, silent, self-assured appearance of an early pioneer woman in her cloth bonnet..... She had a magnificent eye for quality and beauty as well as a great intuitive breeding sense. Her standards were the highest. She always carried a large kitchen knife as she walked in the garden, and if a new seedling displeased her, out it would go, cut below the crown, never more to plague her with its short-comings.” (2010-11 catalog)

A Master’s Advice for Choosing Daylilies

        Christopher Lloyd grew thousands of plants in his world-famous gardens at Great Dixter, and he evaluated them all with the discriminating eye of an artist. For choosing daylilies that look great in your garden – not just in a catalog close-up – he offered this advice in Christopher Lloyd’s Garden Flowers:
        “Don’t be carried away by a single bloom seen out of context....
        “While being dazzled by large blooms, remember that small-flowered Hemerocallis are the most prolific. Furthermore, their individual flowers tend to die off discreetly, whereas large-flowered kinds really need dead-heading every morning, to prevent the colony from becoming slovenly....
        “As with so many ‘improved’ plants, enlarged flowers are often matched by an increase in leaf size and coarseness. Watch out for this. Then again, the naked flowering stem should present its blooms well above the foliage, this being the graceful effect that gives the flowers style....”
        To see exactly what he’s recommending, try a couple of our graceful, prolific, Christopher-Lloyd-style daylilies in your garden this spring. (March 2011)

Eating Flowers: “Scrunchy” ‘Kwanso’ Daylily

        From Christopher Lloyd’s Garden Flowers (2000), here’s another good reason to plant double orange ‘Kwanso’ daylily this spring:
        “H. x fulva, [the common orange daylily, is] a strapping triploid with tawny-coloured flowers and no scent. It naturalizes easily in quite rough places and is a common sight in India, by the roadside. No doubt it was planted in the first instance, because it cannot seed, but once there it spreads by rhizomes to form a colony. The day before the blooms open, the flower buds are habitually gathered to eat raw or stir-fried, and they are even more scrunchy in the double-flowered variety, ‘Kwanso’. A friend, who at one time gardened in Hong Kong, could for a long while not make out why his daylilies seemed always on the point of flowering, but never flowered. His Chinese cook was responsible. I can recommend the flavor, which resembles that of green figs.” (April 2010)

Daylilies Unfazed by Sidewalk Salt

        “Sidewalk salt has a way of killing almost everything it touches,” writes Diane Selly of Minnesota’s Earthworks Gardens, and “with the extra snow and ice this year, you may be using more than usual.” Diane recommends switching to sand whenever possible, and adds that “some plants are salt tolerant and work great as edging plants along sidewalks or driveways: most daylilies, some hostas, some roses, some heucheras, and some ornamental grasses.” (Feb. 2010)

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