Spectacular year for daylilies

Growers Wayne Storrie and Wayne Ward, owners of Canning Daylily Gardens, sold plants from their driveway for five years before they invested more seriously in their business.

“When we first started selling daylilies

there wasn't anyone else. Now there are six retailers in the province,” said Ward, who describes their business as the largest distributor of potted daylilies east of Toronto.

This season has been an exceptional one for their favourite plant and Ward is expecting a spectacular show for their Open House from July 22 to 29, with close to 1,000 varieties blooming in the fields.

“We had a nice cool, wet spring. The plants have never been as big as they are this year and they are just hanging with buds. They're going to be two weeks behind, but it's going to be unbelievable,” he said.

Ward promotes the fact that daylilies are edible and says they have been made into jelly, wine and pancake syrup.

“They taste just like romaine lettuce and you can add them to salads. We just had our annual bazaar and I always do the arrangements. There were very few flowers, so we did simple things like putting a miniature daylily bloom in each wine glass, and filling it with jello. It's very pretty,” he said.

Some of Ward’s favourite varieties include:

‘Red Volunteer’, a gorgeous plant with seven-inch flowers the colour of a bing cherry - dark red with streaks of black through it.

“There's a popularity poll done each year and out of 80,000 daylilies it has been in the top 10 for over 10 years,” said Ward.

For yellow, he leans toward one of their introductions – ‘Pride of Canning’, which has a soft-yellow flower with a heavy gold edge. ‘Vanilla Fluff’ is also recommended with spectacular seven-inch white double flowers.

A white daylily from Canning Daylilies was chosen at the provincial garden convention held in May to be the official flower of the Nova Scotia Association of Garden Clubs. Next year 1600 members of associated garden clubs will receive one of these plants.

A contest is underway to choose a name for its registration with the American Hemerocallis Society and the winner will receive $100 worth of daylilies.

To check out more daylily varieties visit Canning Daylily Gardens online at: www.canningdaylilygardens.com

In Yarmouth, daylilies are on the agenda for Saturday, July 28. The local Communities in Bloom committee has chosen that date for Daylily Day. The 11:30 a.m. event in Frost Park includes a barbecue, free daylilies, and Shantymen entertainment.