More about gardening in 3-D! | Daylily Blog on enjoying all sides!

Despite the crazy hail storm last night, there were still some interesting things happening in early bloom today. Of the near 400 cultivars, only about 10 are blooming now. The excitement is mounting, and I truly cannot believe that bloom season is HERE!

This polymerous bloom on H. ' Wild and Wonderful' showed signs of the hail beating, but I still enjoyed its presence. I remember the first time I saw this cultivar, winning Best In Show somewhere in the blur of my judging memories. Its green throat was the waxiest I had seen to that point, and I scrambled to find it once I left the show. I ended up buying it in the Silent Auction at the Long Island National Convention, the first time I also saw Melanie V's memory-evoking, previous-life gardens and met Elliot Turkiew. It's also where my friends Pam and Lu live, and where Christine Petersen gardens in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been invited to see. Long Island is near the top of my "Places I Need To Go Back To" list, along with New Orleans, Savannah, Bay Harbor and Sedona.

I posted last week about my epiphany that I now had the pleasure of gardening in 3-D, and some of you wrote me to ask more about what I meant. In general, my gardens before had a backdrop of a wall, tree line or fence. You could walk through the garden and enjoy it on either side of a path, or you could stand in front of it and enjoy the plants. But you never walked around the garden. In this set-up, I lost a vantage point of the plantings. Now, my gardens are much different, and I have gained a WHOLE SIDE to my new islands.

For example, the garden below can be seen from here:

or here:

or even here.

In my previous garden there would have only been one view, the one of you looking at the bed straight-on. Like this view, of my old garden in Michigan:

The Schmiths Michigan Garden - circa 2009

While I loved this border garden, notice the fence. It takes away a whole other side of gardening real estate. If the fence were not there, think of what you could do with that open dirt! You could plant a hundred fun things!! I never really thought of it as a fault in my old gardens until I discovered what else I could have!

In these new islands (shown in the trio of pics above), you can walk around and enjoy it from all sides. This allows more people to be in the garden at one time, adds a heck of a lot of gardening real estate, and gives me the opportunity to have multiple dimensions of one part of the garden. The air circulation that is present (now that walls aren't) is doing wonders, too. Check out the scapes in this photo on the left, taken three days ago. Although 100% of these daylilies were planted last fall, the scapes have never been more dense or better budded.

In other daylily happenings, my seedlings are starting to really pop! As you might remember, all of the daylily seed I made were planted at my mom's here in Illinois and have been growing here for the past six years that I have been hybridizing. This is the first summer I will get to see them for more than one day at a time and I AM SO EXCITED! The fourth and fifth year seedlings are really showing off and there are many good things to report. Ill post tomorrow on the first few interesting babies.

Although the early season is awesome for many reasons, I am a bit worried about the daylily show that is two weeks from this Saturday (June 16.) At first I worried the show was too early, now I worry that it is scheduled too late.

Whatever may be, the display of cut daylilies at Alton Square on June 16 from 1:00-4:00pm in JCPenneys Court will be spectacular. I hope you can make plans to stop by there and say hello. Bring some of your own daylilies, too!

We would love to have you. Email me if you would like a show schedule and other helpful documents to help you be successful at exhibiting daylilies.