Welcome to our 2009 Website!

Greetings to our friends and fellow daylily enthusiasts!  

With this year's rainfall surpassing all records (as opposed to last year's monumental drought), gardening certainly presented a whole new set of challenges. Weeds multiplied like bunnies (and for some reason bunnies multiplied like well... bunnies), the tractor splashed up a wake behind it when we tried to mow the sodden lawns and the cool dampness caused a lot of powdery mildew problems for the annuals. But, to their credit, the daylilies thrived during our daily monsoons producing a bounty of bloom and a great deal of rebloom after the season should have been over. All in all it was a spectacular year for daylilies!

2009 Introductions

'Kit And Caboodle'	'Greased Lightning'	'Sneaky Pete'

I'm very pleased to present a trio of daylily introductions for 2009 – two full forms 'Kit And Caboodle,' and 'Greased Lightning' as well as one unusual form 'Sneaky Pete.' (Names are pending AHS approval).  More info and photos can be found here.

A look at some of the seedlings that are being evaluated for future consideration can be found on our slideshow here or on Google Picasa.

Plant Sale

Once again we're pleased to offer a Fall listing of daylilies available for Spring delivery (link to the left). Many of the daylilies in this year's selection were imported from the US and are quite difficult to locate in Canada. All are limited in quantity, however, there may be extra divisions of some after established clumps are split this Spring. Please feel free to inquire about any plants marked as sold out and I'd be happy to advise if we can supply you with a particular plant before we ship orders in late May/09.

Seeds

Unfortunately, I am unable to offer daylily seeds for sale this year. Between having limited time available to make seeds in July and dealing with almost-daily storms this summer my pod-setting rate was quite low. As well, my interest in daylilies is leaning more and more toward working with tetraploid unusual forms and spiders. Setting pods on these can certainly teach you lessons in patience!

Around The Gardens

We had a number of outstanding new-to-our-garden daylilies this year – 'White Eyes Pink Dragon,' 'Drink The Light' and 'Katherine Hepburn' were particularly beautiful for their first season of bloom. Established clumps of 'Webster's Pink Wonder,' 'Ruby Spider,' 'Twisted Sister' and 'Laughing Giraffe' were absolute favourites with our garden guests.

I've put several photos of my new solar water features in the Around The Gardens slideshow. I particularly like the sound of water in a garden, however, fountains requiring electric pumps have not been practical due to the problem of running electricity from the house to distant areas. As an experiment this year, armed with some little solar panels and pumps, I was able to add container fountains to several beds. The small solar units are not terribly powerful so some tinkering is needed to get decent water movement.  They're not the fountains of Bellagio, but after watching a hummingbird have a “fly-through” shower in the fish sprinkler, I decided they were perfect additions to the daylily beds. There has been an incredible interest in these from family, friends and visitors. I'll be working on some new ones over the winter and I'm always happy to answer questions.

Cheers!

Penny Manning / Ball Point Gardens

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