Category: Daylilies

Division – of the good kind

The last red daylily of the 2020 season in our garden bloomed yesterday.

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Other daylilies have already wrapped up or are wrapping up.

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Our attention remains on their beauty, both this year and in future years, and also turns to the potential of the gardens around us.  It is time to start planning to “dig and divide” – a good thing.

Friday a fellow gardener and I walked the association with the purpose of planning the plantings for the final projects this year.  In that discussion, the topic came up of what divisions from our garden will go to other gardens.  My friend has a saying,  “We garden for others”.   There is wisdom in that perspective.  Gardening  fills our mind and gives us hundreds of happy hours each year, and part of that is because it gets us thinking of what others may enjoy.

This year we are dividing some of our “Blue Mouse Ears” from the garden here and giving them new homes when we rehab the Welcome Garden.  Another hosta, an “Elegans” is being divided and going into a neighboring homeowner’s garden.  Our garden stays fit and trim, our association’s landscaper does the heavy lifting of digging and dividing 😊, and if I make room, I get the opportunity to consider what new (ahem daylily) additions make sense to introduce next year 😊😊.

 

 

 

Planning moves, and more mid-July daylilies

About this time of year I start to assess fall moves to optimize next year’s garden.  Last fall we moved out two large Aureomarginata hostas from our garden.  They found new homes around the association where they weren’t crowded and could really shine, and did really well this year in their new locations (yeay!).   My repurpose for that newly empty space in our garden, unfortunately, did not go as planned.  The tulips did “meh” and the asian lilies gifted to me did not do well at all.  Reason?  Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel and friends thought they were their food.  I have since purchased repellent, and that seems to be working.  There is still, however, a large empty space in two areas of the garden.

Meanwhile, in another area of the garden, a delightful Ivory Queen hosta gets overexposure to the sun each year.

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Time to give it a new home, in the more shaded area where one of the Aureomarginata hostas was.  It will fit that space well, and look nice amongst the other “blue” hostas.

Maybe I should move this Patriot hosta too – to the more shaded spot where the other Aureomarginata hosta was.

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It will fit in well and brighten up an area that gets pretty unremarkable after the asian lilies bloom.

With two hostas moved out of sunnier areas, does that mean that I now have spots for two new sunshine loving daylilies?  Possibly …  Hard to say …

And now for a few last pics of the mid-July daylily blooms.

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Triplets

I love it when there are two daylily blooms on a scape, and three are even better!  Two sets of three are quite a treat!  The bottom set was tucked under the taller scapes, close to the ground, but not to be missed.

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And now for some more evidence of seed pods forming.  Looks like there will be an abundance of “chances” again this year for 2021 seedlings.

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And a couple more mid-July pics for good measure.

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We interrupt mid-July …

We interrupt mid-July pictures for a few “today” pictures.

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If you look closely, in the last picture you can see that the Purple D’Oro daylilies are starting to form seed pods.  The Purple D’Oros will live on in the existing plants, the pictures, and, hopefully, in seedlings next year.  We’ll see 3-4 years from now what we got with a little help from our friends the butterflies, the bees, and maybe the hummingbirds.

And now back to mid-July

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Full of color

The gardens have been absolutely full of color for the past few weeks.  Almost everything was blooming at once – all the daylilies except the Marque Moon –  and all the early blooming hostas, plus some late clematis and the hibiscus.  I spent all the free time I could spare just enjoying it.  Words don’t fully describe the beauty so here’s a few pictures.  More to come over the next few days.

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Restless

Something about the garden at the townhouse has me restless right now.  I should be content to sit in the lawn chair on the patio and enjoy the view.  The garden is lush and full.  But I’m restless, looking and saying it needs adjustments.

Up north this would not bother me at all.  But the scope here is so much smaller, drawing attention to planned symmetry and proportion that seems to be stretched this year.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been looking at new gardens, the refreshes that we’ve done in the association.  They are at the start of their life and nothing is crowding anything.  Nothing is blocking the view of anything.  Their full potential is ahead of them.

That’s part of it.  But there’s more.  Things are looking good in parts of the garden here, but “missing” in others.  Moving the aureomarginata out of our garden here last fall, and into other association garden refreshes, left an odd empty space now that the tulips and crocuses are fading – one I don’t like.

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There are hostas I wish I had moved/divided last fall that are now overgrown in their current space and that I wish we had divided last fall and put as a post-tulip layer in place of the aureomarginata, like the ‘Rainforest Sunrise’ out front.

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Under the tree is bothering me too.  It feels hodge-podge this year.  I love the ‘Rainforest Sunrise’ hosta there, but other hostas there feel crowded and random.

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Maybe it just needs some daylilies to start blooming 😊

And then there are irrigation patterns that I need to consider, like how the sprinkler hits daylilies that have gotten tall.  And there are mysteries – like why two ‘Just Plum Happy’ daylilies aren’t doing well this year, but everything around them is.

This weekend I know one decision for certain will drive some planting.  The lavender I planted last year definitely didn’t survive.

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There are two to be pulled out that  will make way for the remaining two daylily seedlings from last year’s Purple D’Oro’ seeds.  The other two I planted here are doing fabulously, and the two available spots are right around the corner, making a nice pattern.

Wait!  Back up!  Is that a new “mini rock feature”!  Why yes, it is!   The old two pavers at the bottom of the downspout were not enhancing that space, so I gathered a number of rocks we have collected and previously scattered in the garden, and put them together for a new look.  Really liking that.  We’ll see what else this weekend brings for ideas.