Today was a glorious East Tennessee fall day. The trees are just beginning to glow with their glorious golds, reds and oranges. It seems as if overnight the world just clothed itself in glowing colors! It was the perfect day to interview a wonderful daylily hybridizer by the name of Hazel Dougherty.
Hazel is 80-some years young and her husband, Everett, a few years older. Hazel thinks that gardening together has been one of the secrets to a happy married life. They are both active participants in the East Tennessee Daylily Society. They live on about four acres of lovely cultivated land. The gardens and various accouterments (like a wonderful Gazebo made from the first oak barn they had) just add to the ambiance of this wonderful place called Dougherty's Daylily Gardens. Their garden is also an AHS display garden.
A Hybridizer's Beginning
Hazel says she got started in hybridizing before she quit nursing. Everett went to a daylily conference in Alabama and purchased their first hybrids. He was the first hybridizer in the family and encouraged her to try. She believes it is important to get the proper parents and only hybridize specific plants for the characteristics that you want. When you hybridize every plant, you may get a lot of ugly ones that are destined for the compost heap!
Tips on Hybridizing
When I asked her how many plants she has named, she hesitated and said, "Well, just under a hundred." I was expecting about 20-30! While Hazel doesn't think she has created many named daylilies, I was really impressed. Here are her tips to create some wonderful plants.
- Listen to what characteristics other gardeners want before you start.
- Think about the type of plant that you want to create.
- Visualize it. The finished plant may not look exactly like it, but it may be even better.
- Pick only the best plants to hybridize. If the parent isn't much, the children may not be either.
- Just use the pollen from the stamen and brush it on the pistil. You don't need fancy equipment. In about eight days, you will see the baby.
- Refrigerate the pollen, if you can't use it immediately.
- Don't hybridize so many plants that you can't remember its parents or what you wanted to accomplish.
- Early morning, before the bees start, is the best time to pollinate.
Awards and Daylilies
Hazel specializes in Diploids and worked on her seedling beds for four years before the AHS convention. She ultimately displayed about 450 mature clumps of her hybridizing efforts. One of my favorites of her named varieties is "Autumn Wood," which won the Presidents Cup Award at the 1995 Convention.
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