Daylilies in the Mail

April 24, 2015 Jennifer de Graaf

You know the stand-by sitcom joke that when dating someone new, you should let the crazy out only a little bit at a time? Well, I've been writing this blog a while, so here's a little piece of my crazy made just for you!Sometimes I get something stuck in my head like a bad craving and MUST have it. You know what I mean, yes? Ever want chocolate really Really REALLY badly? So much so that it felt like a biological need? Yeah, like that, but for colors, color palettes, plants, and so forth.Today, my mail brought me a daylily I've been coveting for years and could never obtain (darn you, Martha Stewart Magazine!). But, thankfully I now have Hemerocallis 'Milk Chocolate'. I've planted it in the garden and hope to grow it up big and fat. I bought it from the generous folks at North Country Daylilies in Buskirk, NY (now apparently gone). Hemerocallis 'Milk Chocolate' is the little guy all the way on the left in the photo above.See, the growers here in California who grow daylilies don't seem to grow this particular cultivar (or at least not list it online). Some growers list it but didn't actually have any or wouldn't return my calls and emails - after looking for this thing for years, I was thrilled when North Country said they had one. ONE. Not only that, they were willing to ship it to California - another stumbling block I've run into before. BUT, they sent me a 3 fan plant, more than most mail order companies would send.I bought 'Milk Chocolate', 'Third Witch' and 'Vatican City' to make the most of the shipping. I stole the images below from the American Hemerocallis Society (AHS) webpage:Milk Chocolate:Third Witch:Vatican City:North Country sent me the biggest danged plants, I am completely delighted. In NY where they are, the snow has just melted away and the dormant daylilies are beginning to stick their heads up. Out here in Northern California, it is warm and spring is old news.One of the ways I hone my professional knowledge is to order plants from mail order companies and see what happens - I look at accuracy, plant quality, packaging, and customer service (bonus: an excuse to buy plants). I've had some wonderful surprises as in this daylily order. I've also had some really unfortunate and problematic orders (I won't be ordering from Wayside or Easy to Grow Bulbs again) that surprised me the wrong way.I've found that generally the growers who love their plants and specialize in certain kinds of plants have the best stock. The big business companies send the smallest, least healthy plants, the most poorly packaged, and have the most errors in order accuracy. I once got a box of dead plants from Wayside and they never did return my inquiries. So, when something goes right like this, I like to crow about it.Do you see these roots on H. 'Vatican City' and the extra fans on 'Third Witch'?! Mail order plant droolworthiness:I have a few other daylilies that I will tell you about another time - that will be fun - there's more crazy to share there.Thanks for reading!

Oh, Lantana, How You Vex Me!

September 2, 2014 degraafassoc

The front of my new place is awash with purple Lantana (Lantana montevidensis). It is lovely stuff if you are both color blind (unless you're into this sort of purple, nothing wrong with that!) and an admirer of wildlife. There are butterflies, bees, spiders, and lizards all over it. It is absolutely marvelous for year-round blooming and needs no supplemental water once established (at least not here, I turned the irrigation off last fall).The flowers are the pepto bismol of purples - not my favorite, though maybe someday I will find a companion plant with a color that mitigates the pepto purple hue. Meh, maybe not. A dear friend of mine said that the overwhelming amount of purple Lantana in my garden made my place look like a retirement home.As much as I'd like to be able to retire (I'd still spend my time designing gardens - I love it that much), I am not ready to live in a dadgum retirement home! Talk about death by association; I can't look at it anymore without thinking about retirement homes. As if that wasn't bad enough, my lovely boyfriend thinks the foliage smells like poo (the flowers smell nice at night). Charming: a poo scented retirement home.Here's my vexation: as much as I intend to remove the Lantana and put in other stuff, it is happy, healthy, requires no water, and supports oodles of critters. So for now it stays.... providing food and shelter for all those bugs and lizards, but lookout, Lantana! You're living on borrowed time. Wanna know what I think might fill the space above? I'm considering a collection of spineless Opuntia that my friend Melinda sent me from Texas along with a few I've collected on my own here. The ones from Texas are rooting in the shed right now - cross your fingers that they all take!So there's my dilemma - removing the Lantana removes habitat, but goodness gracious, there's so danged much of it, I don't really like it, and the new design/plants aren't ready yet. Patience....

Color kismet - bloom times

May 23, 2009 degraafassoc

rose 'the prince' and Lathyrus 'cupani'1

A quick thought today - more color kismet.I currently have 'Cupani' Sweet Peas and Rosa 'The Prince' (an english rose from the David Austin Collection) in bloom. Every year their seasons coincide and I have the luxury of picking these sweet smelling gorgeous things for the inside.Sometimes being matchy-matchy is kinda nice. One hopes that planting palettes don't come off too saccharine, like a Valentine's Day card. But allowing for some plants to really coordinate with each other in hue, saturation, and value can pay off big. I love that this happens for me every May, but I also appreciate the mix of other perennials as they join in - usually right when the sweet peas are done - and the sweet peas bloom after the bearded irises, and......