H. Jerry Pate Williams
Last night I did a seminar for the Men’s Garden Club of San Antonio at the San Antonio Garden Center (next to the Botanical Gardens on Funston). What a great group of gardeners and fun people! I spoke on both daylilies and bearded iris, and just a tad on cannas. Lots of great questions on both daylilies and bearded iris. Over the next week I’ll address those questions on the blog, because if one person has the question, then others will too. As the title suggests, the Men’s Garden Club is open to women – in fact about half the members were women. They meet the first Thursday of each month at the Garden Center at 7 PM. If you live nearby and want to know about gardening, it is a great place to pick up information and meet fellow gardeners. I know that they will also have booths at the Festival of Flowers on May 23rd, and also at the Folklife Festival.
H. Forbidden Fantasy
For the seminar I brought two different daylily scapes with me so people could see one blooming and realize that not all daylilies are simple yellows or old oranges. The first daylily was Jerry Pate Williams which is a melon colored double. It doubles 100% of the time. It is a great soft color and flower. It is good for the front of the border, as a specimen plant, or in a large container by your front door. The second daylily scape was of Forbidden Fantasy. It is a single round dark purple with a yellow ruffled edge and a yellow throat. Great as a specimen plant. Looks good with yellow flowering plants. It also would look good next to some lighter lavenders, as well as some red flowering plants.
Let’s talk a moment about double flowering daylilies. You saw that I said Jerry Pate Williams was 100% double. That means every time it blooms it will be a double. Some other daylilies are only 90% or 70% of the time. That means you could have single flowers on them some of the time, and then some double blooms. These percentages are approximate. When you read the descriptions on the doubles – especially the new hybrids, they usually list what the percentage is from the person who hybridized them.