Day Lilies in a Garden in the Hills in May 2002.

Day Lilies, or hemerocallis have many different varieties and the numbers are increasing all the time. The plant originally came from Asia, like lots of plant varieties grown in Australia, although we have imported many varieties from South Africa.

Although this is not the right time of the year for day lilies to flower, it is a good time to plant them, they need at least 6 hours sun a day if they are going to flower well. Despite all that they need minimum care and that will be an attraction to many gardeners who are busy people.

I spoke to Greta Paine, who owns a nursery completely devoted to this hardy specimen, about day lilies and their popularity. Greta has a nursery at the corner of Bruce Road and Welshpool Road in Wattle Grove; about 12 km from the centre of Perth, Western Australia.

The day lily gets its name because it usually only lasts from morning to evening on the one day. Greta said that the objective was to try to breed for more than a one-day life but they were not always successful. The day lily has many spikes and each flower spike may have a lot of buds that will flower over a period of ten days. So, there could be more than just one day’s life out of a plant.

There are about 6-700 different varieties growing in Greta’s nursery. Greta said:

“When I was chopping the plants up last year, there were couple of varieties that were still trying to grow, even though they had no sun, and I thought I had disposed of them. This may mean of course they could grow wild.”

They flower in the spring and some of the varieties have been known to grow in Alaska, in China, and in Europe where there is snow. It is best to plant them well away from other plants and a good dose of slow release fertiliser helps the plant along.

After a good walk around the nursery I marvelled at the number of different names that had been given to the different varieties. The people who breeding them name them after their families or the place they live and the names are registered in the United States. It is not possible to register the names in Australia.

Towards the end of the walk around this wonderful nursery I finally chose a day lily called “Merinda Coolum Lilac”. It now sits in a sunny spot we made last week and is one of seven or eight day lilies that we hope will add a touch of colour to a spot that has been crying out for some different colours for the past few years. I am not sure what the names of the other lilies are, when they finally flower in the spring we must get someone along to identify them.

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