The Garden Reno is All Done – Like Really, Really All Done ;)

The full garden reno is all done 🙂

It turned out way better than I even imagined, and yet … it is a very different look than before. Intentionally.

Since I last blogged, the Bend got one major addition – the very large daylily stand in the center back of the picture above. It was the daylily stand that bloomed and bloomed for the days my Mom was in the hospital, and it continued to bloom through last week. I actually thought last weekend that it was going to form a pod. It held onto that last spent bloom for 3 days. If it had formed a pod, it would have been on the last daylily bloom of the season for the whole garden. But it did not, and that probably was a good thing. I’m not sure we have enough season left to mature a daylily pod.

With that last bloom shed I went ahead and moved the entire clump. It is now the centerpiece of that area.

Once I got to Sandy’s Corner my plan changed daily, but for the better. I now have something I can imagine working with quite easily for the next 10 years.

The hostas have a greater presence again, and yet, the daylilies still have plenty of space.

And the specific corner Sandy used to sit in has been cleared for 2027s daylily seedlings. Potentially there will be four varieties. Yah, one from my work survived. The pollinators have three 😉

I am working on that birdbath, but it may go. I am on a garden doodad removal kick. A few months ago, I got rid of the clematis and trellises out back. With Sandy’s Corner and the bend, I got rid of the hanging bird bath on the short shepherd’s hook, and, after more than a decade I also removed the double shepherd’s hook with the hummingbird feeder. I was tired of cleaning the hanging bird bath, and we have another hummingbird feeder out front that is the one the hummingbirds prefer. Out back they most often choose the blooming flowers.

Out front I moved a hosta out of the entryway corner (to the back) and in its place, I moved in a Chocolate Drop Sedum that was long overdue for division.

It should begin to fill out that corner nicely.

And then at the historic cemetery I planted all of the seedlings I had grown this summer from seed I harvested there last fall.

And, on the one-month anniversary of my Mom’s passing, I donated and planted three fans of historic daylily Autumn Red from my garden to the historic cemetery garden. The Autumn Red daylily variety was registered 85 years ago, the same year my Mother was born. It was a special, dedicated trip over for me, and a special moment of planting. That planting is now the oldest registered daylily variety in the garden there, and it matches a huge stand of Autumn Red daylilies we found between some oak trees on the perimeter of the property this summer. Very special all around.

It is a pivotal year. In many ways it has been a very tough year. And yet … we move forward. God still has work for us to do, and that we shall, according to His will.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that you are truly Blessed!

“Sandy’s Corner” Renovation Begins

The last garden area to get a renovation this year will be “Sandy’s Corner”.

The name “Sandy’s Corner” comes from our little Chihuahua Terrier mix who passed this past January. He loved sitting on the corner of that area and snoozing in the sun.

Snoozing begins – a bit farther out in the cool grass

The different components of Sandy’s Corner

The garden that is now Sandy’s Corner has had many looks over the years, including a Hostaville of sorts, and a daylily seedling bed, the remnants of which are now fully integrated, and some have bloomed, and even need to be moved to better locations.

I recently took a walk down memory lane for that garden area and discovered I kind of miss some of Hostaville.

Not the full extent of Hostaville – that was a bit much.

But I do want some of that look back, in mini form. Closer to the house, more in the shade, the “looking out” view.

The Plan

I started this week with a pretty “thought out” plan – one that took into account a new viewing orientation, the sprinkler pattern, my own seedlings that I tucked in small places but that have since bloomed and matured to need more space, and then things that were languishing and needed division and/or a new environment (sun exposure, water pooling patterns …). I put a fair amount of time into which plants should be in scope this year and what the dividing and transplanting sequence needed to be.

And, as so often happens, my “full plan”, was just that – a plan.

It took a bit to get going.

That garden has a lot of memories, lots of fun moments, lots of time praying, lots of time rejoicing, lots of time learning the art of daylily hybridizing, lots of time sharing with friends, and also quite a bit of time grieving. But it is time for a change, a gift to my future self.

Still, as I looked at the garden, in a bit of a funk, it took a fair amount of self-motivation to get out there and start implementing the logical plan. It has been hot outside, the AC feels far more comfortable, and entering things in spreadsheets and hitting refresh to update pivot tables became a stall technique. It is always good to exercise healthy caution in the heat, but Step 1 was to move “just one hosta”, and I could come back in the AC 20 times during the process if I wanted and take as much time as I needed.

Out I went. And soon got a whole new perspective on the plan.

I started with that step # 1. I quickly discovered that, indeed, step #1 was the right starting point, but the scope was a bit off. I ended up moving 1/2 of the intended Blue Mouse Ears clump into the allotted spot. It needs space to expand.

With step #1 done, as I looked at the result, I realized the swap that was steps #2 and #3 was going to need to be changed too. Lots of thinking ensued. And then … I realized … I have a great hosta for that spot. One that, gasp!, was not on the plan 😉 I initially considered transplanting it this year but crossed it off the list.

I will need to wait on that hosta’s replacement to be available – a sedum that is just beginning to flower. And so, for now, the space is a placeholder. The seedling that was there did a swap with the daylily that closed the path to Sandy Corner.

Placeholder for additional hosta (transplant)

Time to start moving the daylilies

With the hosta adjustments made, it was finally time to tackle the daylily section. That is the area that has the correct sun exposure to house my established and purchased daylilies as well as to mature my own seedlings.

After many years of trial and error, I landed with an approach for seedlings that is a bit unconventional. I tuck the seedlings in with the mature daylilies and then after the seedlings bloom, I assess for moves.

I didn’t land at that approach lightly. I was a bit desperate for space for the seedlings. Mixing them in with the mature and purchased daylilies works wonderfully. And now, with the path removed I have extra options. Plus, with my shift to harvesting self-seed only, at least for a time, there is no need for much access for doing crosses.

Closing off the path with one of my own seedlings

Closing off the path was a big move for me. I considered moving the Autumn Red that bloomed and bloomed over the days my Mom was passing. But I know myself. That Autumn Red needs to move up front to take a prime spot among the other Autumn Reds. And I have a place for it.

The daylily that I chose to close off the path and start a new configuration for Sandy’s Corner was one of my own seedlings, an intentional cross I made that bloomed for the first time this year.

It had a few different scapes and a few different looks, but this one was my favorite.

The plan was very helpful with that first decision. It was a priority 1 for moves.

And now it is in place.

Day by day the reno is coming together. Not according to the original plan, but I’m good with that.

There are a boatload of memories, and even some triggers I need to make sure I address, but all in all, I now have a version 3, or maybe 3.5, and I think it is much closer to where I’ll finish.

We’ll see what happens.

Until then, Be Blessed 🙂

The Bend is Done

Today I planted one more set of Autumn Red daylily fans in the area where the path used to be. That makes nine bunches of Autumn Red daylilies out front. It should be awesome!

The final touch was a bit of whimsey with the frog and turtles.

And just like that, the corner was done.

As I realized my reno work there was done, I thought about how many 100s of days I looked at that area and thought it needed something additional. Well … 😉

As for the sad looking pot of Purple Shamrocks – Those should look more like this next year.

And the area where the straight path was – I debated whether I wanted something in this spot.

I had the daylily for that spot. It would have looked great. But my walking around pink sneakers came to the rescue. 10 seconds. Outline gone.

And with that, I am ready to get on to the changes to Sandy’s Corner.

Even before removing the path, Sandy’s Corner was already on my radar for daylily/hosta swaps. With my decision to not do daylily crosses next year, the plan is firming up. Daylilies don’t need to be easily accessible along paths next year, and I have a very strong sneaking suspicion I will be doing minimal crosses, if any, in future years. My coworkers, the pollinators, are very impressive. And I like this new job of enjoying – planning, planting, relaxing, and then harvesting what the pollinators choose. So onward to the next phase.

Until then, Be Blessed 😊

Project “Remove the Front Path” Has Begun

For almost two decades I have had a path going through the garden from the front to the back.

It is how I have designed my gardens for a very long time, and it has definitely looked nice at the townhome, but it also causes harm to the garden contents when it is time for contractor maintenance that requires a hose. It seems to be a flashing beacon for the path of least resistance.

It happened again yesterday. I cringed as I saw the hose go down. And I cringed quite a bit more as I saw the hose being pulled out after the maintenance was done. Over a sedum, and a currant, and multiple daylilies and coming to a stop when it tipped over the bird bath.

I have been thinking about a garden “spiff up”. The sprinklers are all dialed in again, and I have been watching the pattern. I know what will work. I have more Blue Mouse Ears hostas I want to divide. I have a large Autumn Red daylily clump that is languishing in too much shade. Getting rid of the path out front would solve a lot of needs.

Today was the day. Project “Remove the Front Path” has begun.

There is more to come, so stay tuned 🙂

Simplicity and Sharing

Throughout the 2026 gardening season I had one main daylily goal – to collaborate with the pollinators. I focused on paring down on the volume of daylily crosses I did, and I trusted the pollinators to make awesome crosses. They did not disappoint. They have three successful self-seed pod parent varieties so far – Purple D’Oro, Just Plum Happy, and Autumn Red. Those three have been hard to bring to bloom from self-seed, so I am delighted to once again have the opportunity.

My intentional crosses have produced two new pod varieties this year. Both were retries that were failures in previous years. And then for tests, I had some pretty definitive results – all of them failed. I have one final test that is pending and that is a second go at Cedar Waxwing x Cedar Waxwing. Cedar Waxwing self-seed was my last untested option to see if perhaps it is Hello Yellow’s parentage. That effort, just like Hello Yellow’s behavior, produced a pod I pretty much suspected would fail, and it did. However, since that is consistently Hello Yellow’s behavior as well, to make a pod but have it fail, I tried one last test of Cedar Waxwing x Cedar Waxwing. If it, too, fails, I am out of ideas for Hello Yellow’s parentage and I will be done with that effort because … I have decided to go to all self-seed in 2027, and more specifically, pollinator created self-seed. I have loved the results, and I love the idea. Let the pollinators choose.

Part of the decision is also because I will have my hands full over the next few years, sharing. There are 29 crosses awaiting bloom in future years in the townhome gardens, and I want to share as each of those bloom their firsts. I also really want to start getting the historic cemetery garden more focused on historic daylilies. I have seen firsthand what a drought did to that garden this year, and the daylilies that are already there did the best, hands down. Now I am excited to see what historic daylilies do.

So, there it is. Although I know it will take boatloads of discipline to not do any daylily crosses in 2027, I feel super peaceful about that choice. And I am very excited to start the daylily focus at the historic site cemetery, starting with transplants of Autumn Red daylilies from my own garden this fall.

Oh Goodness!

Bonus post.
I saw these pictures of 9 and 10 years ago today and had a little laugh.
Goodness, that’s an awful lot of hostas! Most of those are long gone. That exposure was way too much sun for them. I moved them more into the shade and used the space for more daylilies. But the South Seas and Naomi Ruth were there all those years ago 🙂

Transitioning Toward the Fall Garden

The daylilies are wrapping up.

The pods are being watched for condition.

Decisions are being made on moves.

This daylily has gone from a seedling to a normal sized Autumn Red daylily.

Although that is wonderful, it is a taking a beating from the sprinklers. I am finding blooms on the ground.

The daylilies in that little corner will be transplanted, and shorter daylilies, probably the Marque Moons that need to be transplanted, will go into that space.

The seedlings are growing, and even the seeds that did not germinate in pots, when given a last chance through direct sowing (in the ground), rose to the call.

And now the Sedum will take over. Soon the green will turn to pink, and then to red. If the birds don’t eat them all.

It will probably be a busy transplant season, as always, but way less seeds to harvest and get into storage.

I have really enjoyed narrowing my work on daylily crosses this year. It was, for sure, a discipline, but a good one. From what I can tell I will have 3 maybe 4 intentional cross varieties go to seed, and 6, maybe 7 self-seed varieties go to seed. Two of the self-seed varieties are super exciting to me as they are new this year. One is with Hush Little Baby, a promising historic daylily (diploid) that bloomed in our garden for the first time this year, and one is Pink Moon, one of my own (tetraploid) seedlings that bloomed for the first time this year. But the seed from both of those, if viable, and if it germinates next spring, will not be a blooming daylily for at least 3 years.

Next year my daylily focus will be even more specific. After many years of being the queen of tetraploid hybridization in our gardens, South Seas seems to be waning. I will probably not replace it as I have so many of my own South Seas seedlings now. I plan to turn my focus to working exclusively with my own tetraploid seedlings and then, hopefully, if the three bare root Hyperion I planted this spring bloom next year, Hyperion will be the focus of my diploid work. Hyperion is also the oldest historic daylily in our gardens. Fingers crossed for bloom next year.

And with that, I want to give a heads up that we have some family needs and I will probably not be posting as much. Prayers are always welcome.

Blessings to you all!

Historic Daylily – Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing is another of our historic daylilies in the townhome gardens.

Like Naomi Ruth, I’m not sure I would plant Cedar Waxwing for naturalizing, but it is an absolute beauty in our Worker Bee garden at the townhome.

Cedar Waxwing was registered in 1979. Its parentage is sdlg x sdlg, so there is not much information on Cedar Waxwing’s parentage that could aid in choosing parentage features for crosses. There is also no info that I can find on its fertility, but it is registered as a tetraploid and I have proved out it is pod fertile with a cross I did with Coral Majority.

Cedar Waxwing may also be pollen fertile, but that has only been proved out with one year’s self-seed in our garden, and I am not even sure it went to seedling. And that Cedar Waxwing self-seed is where the intersection and mystery with Hello Yellow lies.

Hello Yellow is one of my own seedlings.

I have been working hard at identifying Hello Yellow’s parentage. It is a bit of a mystery because back in 2022 and 2023 when Hello Yellow was “born” in our gardens, I was still doing minimal record-keeping. Basically, writing parentage on the envelopes when I stored the seed, and then taking pictures at planting times. Yah. Life was simpler then haha! Luckily, I do have a picture of the envelopes atop the planted pots. So, I kind of know the varieties. More on that in a minute.

When Hello Yellow bloomed only one year after planting, I was delighted. That was uncharacteristically fast for our gardens. When I went to identify what would yield a small yellow bloom, I discovered it was time to get more serious about record-keeping.

Through process of elimination, including ploidy testing and bloom recognition from other known crosses, I think I have narrowed down to two reasonable possibilities. It is either a wacky chance that my early recording practice was not in error, and Hello Yellow is a very rare tetraploid x diploid cross that slipped through, or it is a Cedar Waxwing self-seed seedling. I doubt that I successfully got seed from a Marque Moon (tetraploid) x Pink Tirzah (diploid) cross. I definitely have not been able to replicate it. And I really tried. But maybe. You never know. I have, however successfully crossed Marque Moon x Pink China Doll. It is purple. Turning to Mauve in the strong sun of a long summer day. And kind of tall. Definitely not short. Definitely not yellow.

So, this year I did a Cedar Waxwing x Cedar Waxwing intentional cross. One try. It worked. It has a pod. Now I will see if the pod goes to seed and if the seed germinates (next year). Then if it blooms in 2+ years and it looks like Hello Yellow, by golly, the mystery will be solved. It will go into my personal records as Cedar Waxwing x Cedar Waxwing. If not, I am out of ideas lol and it will remain a mystery.

And that is it for my info on Cedar Waxwing, and for my mini-series on historic daylilies in our gardens. I do have others, and I have done crosses with them, that went to seed and seedling, and they are in our gardens, but the daylilies themselves have either waned or underperformed in our gardens, and, because I have so many seedlings in progress, I am going to just allow those daylilies to live out their natural lives in parts of the garden that I rarely go into for crosses. They can just “be”. Lucky daylilies 😉

Historic Daylilies – Tender Love and Naomi Ruth

This is historic daylily ‘Tender Love’. Tender Love is our third oldest historic daylily in the townhome gardens, and I am not at all hesitant to say I wish I had more than one. With time and patience, they will multiply and need dividing.

Registered in 1970, ‘Tender Love’ is 56 years “old” this year. Remember, though, that registration does not reflect the actual age of the daylily variety. It takes years to get to registration – making the cross, harvesting the seed, bringing it to seedling, then waiting for bloom, and after that waiting to see how it matures (determining consistent characteristics and features it displays).

I purchased ‘Tender Love’ from Oakes Daylilies in 2020. It took a few years to establish. Back then I was planting in fall. I had a number of failures with that approach in our Minnesota gardens and have since shifted to spring planting when I do purchase, which is now pretty uncommon. (I have 29 new seedling varieties due to have first bloom within the next couple years, and that will keep me at capacity for this thing I am calling a “hobby”.)

This year ‘Tender Love’ is looking exceptionally beautiful. It is much more mature than previous years, with four scapes and multiple buds going to bloom per scape.

‘Tender Love’ is a diploid, a late season bloomer, has a beautiful form I very much appreciate, and is nicely fragrant.

On the hybridizing scene, ‘Tender Love’ is both a pod and pollen parent in our gardens. Last year I had two successful crosses that went to seedling – one with ‘Autumn Red’ (yesterday’s featured historic daylily) and one with ‘Pink Tirzah’. Both of those seedling varieties are awaiting bloom in the next couple years. This year I did a re-try of a “Tender Love’ cross that has failed in previous years, with ‘Naomi Ruth’, our fourth oldest daylily in our townhome gardens. TBD on that result.

‘Naomi Ruth’ was registered in 1972. It has one of my favorite forms, it is a diploid, and it is also late blooming. It would not be a daylily I would think of for naturalizing, but it was an excellent pod and pollen parent with ‘Romantic Rose’ and with “Pink Tirzah’ last year producing a plethora of seeds that went to seedling this year. Those blooms should debut in 2027-2028.

‘Romantic Rose’ is not an historic daylily, but it is a long-time part of our gardens.

‘Pink Tirzah’, from what I can gather, is also not an historic daylily. In fact, I cannot find it on garden.org or the AHS site. I bought “Pink Tirzah’ from Park’s many years ago, as a 1-year-old bare-root. ‘Pink Tirzah’ is also pod and pollen parent to multiple years of crosses, including ‘Autumn Red’, yesterday’s featured historic daylily.

Tomorrow we will be on to Cedar Waxwing, and Oh, the story of that one! Just a sneak peek – Cedar Waxwing may hold the key to the Hello Yello mystery.

Historic Daylilies

This year I began my focus on historic daylilies. I am absolutely enamored with how old homesites can have barely ruins of what was once there and still have daylilies coming up.

This year we found some historic daylilies that had naturalized at the historic cemetery. Autumn Reds and Fulvas, so far. AI tells me seeds would not survive birds digestive system. Those Autumn Reds and Fulvas were probably planted there by a loving family member or friend or a volunteer gardener. Can you imagine the stories they could tell?

I got to thinking – those daylilies have probably survived grass cutting and deer munching for decades, maybe longer. Fulva could have been planted when the historic cemetery began. A testament to their endurance.

We had a drought this year. The historic cemetery does not have sprinklers. The garden looks rough. But the daylilies bloomed and even made abundant pods (which I pulled and put in compost). The greens are fine.

And I thought of the Autumn Reds out front at the townhouse. They are not part of the sprinkling pattern. They survive on rain, and even through drought they look beautiful.

I looked at my daylily inventory, and also my own seedling list. A vast majority of the seedling varieties have at least one historic parent. Many have both. Which ones would survive drought and low to no maintenance best? I am guessing the historic ones would fare best.

And I thought to myself, what would happen at the historic cemetery if I replaced fading plants that are not very drought tolerant to historic daylilies? What would it look like in 10, 20, 50 years? Would they still come up and bloom? Would they naturalize if the cemetery volunteer program faded, as has happened various times during the cemetery’s history? I am guessing the daylilies in the garden would be there, blooming away.

Daylilies, Daylilies. Yes, please, more historic daylilies 🙂