A Visit with Dr. Darrel Apps, and Of Course, Daylilies

High summer is here, and in Wild Rose, as strange as is may seem that the name of the village is not Daylily, that means looking at, thinking about, talking about, and evaluating daylilies.  Last night, I fell asleep thinking about daylilies.  I would bet that is the situation for my neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps, too.

Dr. Apps, has retired to my village, but the use of the word "retired" is probably not correct.  He has simply changed his venue.  His daylily breeding program is moving along faster now than it probably ever has.  

Looking for Something to Do This Weekend? Come to Wild Rose, WI!

Calling all gardeners, weekend road-trippers, and classic car buffs!  This weekend it is time to combine all three!

As I primarily blog about gardening, I'll start there.  Dr. Darrel Apps, the famed daylily hybridizer, my neighbor, and local Kiwanis member is donated 70 different selections of daylilies to a Kiwanis fundraiser held on Saturday (9/21/13) morning 7:30 to 10:30 at the Lions' Building just south of Wild Rose on State Highway 22.  These daylilies are "modern" daylilies (he uses this phrase here locally, because when the locals think daylilies, they almost invariably think "ditch lilies", (a name Dr. Apps abhors).

The one thing a daylily breeder never has enough of is space.  He is cleaning out his plot of everything of which the results was similar to an already patented  cultivar, dividing out cultivars he uses for breeding and grow like gangbusters and are eating up his breeding plot's real estate, or plants he just doesn't need at this point in his breeding program.  These are the same sorts of flower sold in the White Flower Farms breeders collections of daylilies.  And, actually, a lot of those sold in the White Flower Farms catalog when Dr. Apps was at Bridgeton, NJ were his.  Now, he is here in Wild Rose.  They will be sold mostly as two fan divisions, starting at $3, going up to $10 for things like divisions of breeders' plants which would normally sell for hundreds of dollars.

I've got my eye on a few fans of this dark one!

The fans will all be labeled with color, height, and other growing information, and a name if it has one.  If you buy an unnamed one you can name it in your garden yourself!

Next, there is the Classic Car Show and Cruise.  I have lots of details on the home page of the village's website.  It's on Friday Night, and starts at the Wild Rose Elementary School, winds up on Main Street, where it is followed by a free street dance and live music.  Our Main Street is lined with over 50 scarecrow exhibits this year.  These are incredible and nearly worth the drive in themselves.

This is followed by a Saturday full of  fun: the free car show, pancake breakfast, activities for the kids... Lots to do.  If pancakes didn't fill you up, have lunch at one of our restaurants on Main Street and walk it off chatting with the scarecrows.  (We'll never tell!)

And, if you need a quiet moment to contemplate nature, take a stroll around our Mill Pond on our Boardwalk, or hop in the car and take the six mile trip over to Covered Bridge Road and the Springwater Volunteer Covered Bridge.

It's definitely worth a road trip!  Everyone here hopes to see you around!

'Tis the Season! Daylilies, Like Christmas in July!

Unknown daylily in my long border, probably bought out of someone's yard years ago as a fan dug then and there.

Daylily Strawberry Candy

Daylily Mary Todd, always one of the first to bloom, given to me as a garden-warming gift from dear friend Sheila Mukite.

Unnamed seedling bought out of an IL breeder program

Photo: Courtesy Dr. Darrel Apps; an unreleased seedling from his breeding program, a diploid rebloomer.  Yes, I'm sure it's really those colors, and he has two even more scrumptious than that.  (Retired, my butt!)

Everyday around here is like opening a new Christmas present!  Between the daylilies blooming in my yard and the chance viewing of some of hybridizer Dr. Apps' across the way!

Enjoy!

Unusual Plants from the Garden of Dr. Darrel Apps

Sometimes when I see something so fantastical, so extraordinary that it is completely beyond my comprehension, I imagine what people might have thought when first seeing a rhinoceros or a coelacanth. This feeling doesn't happen often for me in gardens, but every so often, yeah, it does.

I had just spent and hour looking over the daylilies in the breeding program of Dr. Darrel Apps when he calls on the phone and tells me I simply must come over and take a look at his clivia. It has five blooming stalks. This one is an orange one. Darrel has a yellow clivia and an orange clivia of enormous proportions.

I accused Marilyn and Darrel of spoofing me with fake flowers and had to rub several of the stems and blooms between my fingers just to be sure.

Equally amazing was this trumpet vine. I believe this is the first bloom I have seen, although Darrel said it had bloomed last year. I stopped talking in mid-sentence to check out this one. Dr. Apps told me it is truly hardy to zone 6 and growing here doesn't do it justice, but he couldn't help himself and had to bring it from NJ when he moved home to WI.

He told me there is a selected cultivar name 'Morning Sun'. I can only imagine what this vine would look like covered in these blooms that look nothing like the campsis radicans grown almost invasively here. Other than the leaf structure and color, they seem to have nothing in common.

Darrel can never say too many good things about the calamagrostis Karl Foerster. He tells me their are, in his opinion, just about five really good grasses for the upper tier of the United States. This is one. He also really likes the panicum 'Dewey Blues'. 'Elijah Blue' the blue fescue is another he feels is good. He hasn't mentioned the others, but my choices would be the carex 'Ice Dance' and the miscanthus purpurea - purple flame grass. I also like the panicum 'Heavy Metal' because of its uniform seed heads. He grows northern sea oats in his yard for winter flower arrangemens, so a good bet he prefers that one over my preference for the miscanthus.

A couple daylilies from Dr. Apps' breeding program. I asked him their name. He would be miffed that I've forgotten, but they are too pretty to exclude.

Dr. Apps, daylily hybridizer and promoter, has often told me that gardeners that only grow daylilies are "boring", that they limit themselves and are missing out on the really vast experience of gardening.

Dr. Apps is not one of those people.

Making Light of Garden Chores and the Last Frost Date: The One Thing You Must Do in Your Garden

A few pictures from the 2011 Garden Walk at Dr. Darrel Apps' Wisconsin garden.




You can have a nice garden or you can obsess. Last year, you may remember, my across the street neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps, was planning to show his garden as part of the Kiwanis' Random Acts of Culture Show. From the minute the snow cleared in late May he was a whirling dervish of gardening activity.

It wore me out just watching.

His garden, when the time came was just perfect. He asked me to help docent his garden. It was a blast.

This year with my Handsome Son's graduation, it's my turn. Of course, my yard has to be ready about the time Darrel was actually able to get out in his to begin.

So, as neighboring gardeners are want to do, Dr. Apps has walked through my garden with me, and I through his, discussing for the most part perennial weed control and the crazy weather we have had. It seems the weather people will throw out a freeze warning at the drop of a hat. I had frost on my car yesterday morning and again this morning. But frost and FROST are two different things.

My mother and father, always full of doom and gloom (my father had a cousin who verbally recounted to him her memories of the "Year Without a Summer"), call me on a regular basis to tell me the temperature is going to get down to 24 degrees Fahrenheit (or some other abysmal number).

I'm a bit more pragmatic. I know that the tender-looking flowers already in bloom make their own sort of internal anti-freeze. I know most apple and fruit trees freezing is not freezing, but a temperature somewhat lower. And although I have my cactus and several other xeric plants out on my deck that are zone 8 to 10, it is not only freezing temperatures but how long the temperature stays that low. Also, the ground has been fairly warm for quite a while now. So the air warms up pretty quickly when the sun comes up.

Freezing just doesn't stay freezing for very long.

So when I come home from an appointment and see Darrel out with his new camera taking a picture of his beautiful bush covered with creamy sprays of flowers at the corner of his cafe latte painted garage, I can't resist.

"What are you taking pictures of that UGLY shrub for?" I holler out my car window. "You missed it! It was so much prettier two days ago," I add another gardener lament.

"I'm trying out my new camera, I can't get it to focus," he says.

Sure enough, new camera with cool lenses and all the bells and whistles. I wonder how he got Marilyn to release the purse strings long enough for his to persuade her to allow him its purchase. Then it comes to me. It, the camera, is not a plant. She has a harder time with him buying plants.

"So, is it going to freeze again?" he asks with a twinkle in his eye. "There is no global warming, you know," he adds with a laugh.

"Oh, it might touch 29 or 30 a couple times, if it is clear around the full moon, but nothing serious. The ground is just too warm, I reply.

And so it has happened, the Dreaded Darrel Time Suck, as my son calls it. We can't resist talking gardening to each other. I'm sure Marilyn has a word for it, too. For the outside world time travels on at a regular pace. When gardeners get together time slows down. It seems as if mere minutes have passed. I'm pretty sure I made him late for supper by the time we had toured each others' gardens and he had shown me what all (among which are the likes of 2,300 new daylily crosses) he has growing in his grow room under artificial lights.

He remarks I have a fairly good start on getting my yard ready for the party.

Our garden styles are dramatically different, so this is a big kudos. He's an old school IPM and chemical guy, where I'm always attempting to make sense of the latest organic trend. Two gardeners with the same appreciation trying to get to garden nirvana on two very different paths. Ours are the "two paths that diverged in the woods" of Robert Frost fame.

Instead of bagging most of my yard waste, that which is weed free gets spread on my alley border bed. If it is primarily pine needles onto my blueberry beds it goes. All that stuff I shred to prevent identity theft goes under (most of the time) a layer of pine needles.

He looks at my beds filled with yard waste.

"I might spread a thin layer of cypress mulch on top for the party," I concede.

"Oh, it looks okay as it is," he replies. Then he drops his three little words of wisdom, "Clean bed lines."

He is so right.

If I were to give any gardener advice, It would be the same. Good clean crisp bed lines clearly marking nice green weed-free grass (I hand dig my dandelions, as does the 80-year-old organic gardener next door to Darrel!) and garden beds is key to having a beautiful garden. I have this long curvaceous bed line running almost the length of my yard. When I clean up this bed line it is sheer beauty to behold.

So for all the things I can not fix in my garden quickly and easily this is one thing I can and will do. I will have clean bed lines. You might find a weed or two among my flowers, or some sickly looking artichokes, but you won't remember them. It will be the overall presentation of the garden you will remember. That comes down to clean bed lines framed by a lush grass path.


My garden on the same day as Dr. Apps' 2011 Garden Walk.

Last Post on the Kiwanis' "Random Acts of Culture"

This will be the last post detailing the garden party hosted by Dr. Darrel and Marilyn Apps and the Kiwanis. The editor for our local weekly paper covered the event, too, and the upcoming issue devotes an entire full color page of great publicity for the event.


Hostas at three years old, growing in the best soil money can buy. No root competion here on the north side of the house.


Parterre of boxwood, barberry, sedum 'Angelina' and 'Gold Coin' lysimachia. 'Black Lace' Sambuca is featured in the center of the wheel.


Out quaint village seen beyond the yard. Cool yellows, grays, and blues set the mood in this section of the garden.



Hope you enjoyed the tour. By all accounts, it was a success. I think the intended goal was 50 guests per garden party. The first session was 72 and the second 62. Ticket fees went to the Kiwanis Scholarhip Fund.

Dr. Darrel Apps Does Daylilies (and Corrects my Blog!)

If you have a daylily in your garden, chances are my neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps had something to do with it, somewhere along its genetic history. Until about 1950, daylilies were basically yellow or orange and pretty much looked like the orange ditch lilies blooming in profusion along the roadways of rural America. Back about 1975, though, Darrel with his newly minted PhD met up with a Professor Jablonski at the University of Kentucky. There, Jablonski was coming up with the 'Stella de Oro' daylily. Stella was different. Stella bloomed for what seemed like forever. Stella had tons of bloom. Even the foliage was different, shorter, bluer, yet the flowers bloomed above the foliage. The ubiquitous, nearly a weed, garden daylily of today signaled the beginning of daylilies as we know them.

Dr. Apps bought an originator's clump off Professor Jablonski (at the price of $50--yeah $50 for Stella!) and crossing it with a orangey-pale reddish hemerocallis fulva grossa (which are typically fairly sterile) managed to get the first of what would be daylilies with colors other than school bus yellow or ditch lily orange.

Over the next few years, daylily hybridizing exploded. Darrel introduced daylilies like 'Little Red Hen,' 'Happy Returns' and started his Woodside Nursery in Bridgeton, New Jersey. When he retired (yeah, he's retired but his work pace makes me dizzy!) he sold his Woodside Nursery to Centerton Nursery which maintains a listing of over 340 of his daylilies they have for sale. They do a much better job of close-up pictures than I do, and yes, the colors actually look like that!



Daylilies in a yellow-orange palette.


The color spectrum is huge these days. Daylilies come in almost every shade from creamy white to a deep burgundy purpley nearly black.




In the left foreground 'Romance Returns' and on the right, 'The Full Monty'.


Here in the United States, florists do not use daylilies in cut flower centerpieces. Darrel shows off what we Americans seldom see, daylilies can be the center of attention, despite their short shelf life. Could any garden party table top be more complete?


Darrel is not shy about including daylilies other than his own in his garden. Here is a close-up of the 'The Full Monty' developed by a fellow hybridizer. Sunday it sure looked like it was the whole package!

The affair on Sunday included so much more than just dayliles. See tomorrow's blogpost for some of Darrel's parterre and layout of his garden and the other cultural offerings sponsored by the Kiwanis in heir "Random Acts of Culture" garden party.

CORRECTIONS: The Internet can be a dangerous place. I do try to get it straight, so in an attempt to straighten out some of my crooked and glossy facts about Dr. Darrel Apps and daylily hybridizing, straight from the daylily's throat, sorta, this from Dr. Darrel Apps:

"Rachelle,
Just saw your blog for the first time! Enjoyed it immensely! Great pictures.

I've got to give you some information to correct a couple of things. Walter Jablonski was not a professor but a farmer from Merriville, IN. He started sending me letters while I was at the University of Kentucky and we became friends. I usually would visit him in Indiana on my way back to WI to see our parents in July. He introduced 'Stella de Oro' in 1975 and I got one of the first pieces for $50.00. I crossed this plant with every cultivar I had and got one seedling out of it by 'Suzie Wong' which I selected an introduced as 'Happy Returns'. Later I got 'Pardon Me' from some crosses and these two cultivars are in the background of many of my rebloomers.

A.B. Stout while at the New York Botanical Garden collected Hemerocallis fulva var. rosea (he named the clone 'Rosalind') and it was from this plant crossed with other Chinese species that much of the color breaks came. Several decades later I did use this plant and in fact recently selected some spidery forms from it. I did have most of the species but only brought three to Wild Rose because of lack of space.

I have never been President of the American Hemerocallis Society. I have been a regional Vice President and did serve on the board for a term and I've also received several awards. I asked to get off the board after one term and chose to spend my time with the International Plant Propagators Society where I did become president.

One last thing. I don't have a Ph.D. in Horticulture but rather in Agriculture Extension Education. At the time several Extension Specialists took their degrees in that area because it offered a better background in working with information delivery systems. Often the Ph. D. in Horticulture was physiology which wasn't the best preparation for Extension work.

You've got to see the daylilies at the other place one of these mornings soon. Give me a call.
Darrel "

The Kiwanis and Dr. Darrel and Marilyn Apps: Forces of Nature

Darrel and Marilyn's home, note, no daylilies!


My house across the street--daylilies, I grew from seed. I have since learned the seed I bought from Jung's to grow out probably came from the hybridizing efforts of Dr. Apps.

Door prizes, roses, not daylilies. This is Wild Rose... go figure.



I would guess my quiet one block long street in the village was the busiest street in the county today. The Kiwanis Club is a force to be reckoned with and although the weatherman was calling for scattered showers, Mother Nature just wouldn't dare.

You see, I live across the street from one of the world's best daylily hybridizers.

And, I think my neighbor has been thumbing his nose at Mother nature for a while now.

And yes, "world's" best. Dr. Darrel Apps, Ph.D in horticulture and daylily hybridizer of over 390 patented daylilies, is my across the street neighbor.

The juggernaut that is the Kiwanis Club in my village held it first "Random Acts of Culture," a two-session, two-hour garden party featuring a tour of Dr. Apps' garden and restored Queen Anne home accompanied by musicians, oratory, and a pastel artist. This all in an endeavor to raise money for the Kiwanis scholarship fund. There were roving appetizer trays, punch, ice tea. Luckily, I was asked to give garden tours.

Any opportunity to talk about plants in such a beautiful yard, versus weed them, is a good thing!


View through the pergola of his musa bajoo (he over-wintered it in his basement in peat moss in a 5-gallon bucket after exposing it to a light frost last fall.

The pink bush is a rose, I believe it is Polar Joy.  To the left is a LA lily, I don't know which. The white spikey plant is Culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum) and the blue is echinops ritro. 

Not a lot of daylilies, what's with that? You'd think there would be lots and lots! Well there are several if you look, but as Darrel says, "Just daylilies are boring." I kid you not, I'm quoting him. Another quote? "Anyone who grows just daylilies and thinks they're a gardener...they're not." Okay, pretty harsh words from someone, I'm pretty sure is a past president of the National Daylily Society (or maybe they call themselves "Hemerocalis"). But remember, he does have a doctors in horticulture, not just daylilies, which are his passion. He can rattle off the Latin faster than the school basketball team runs the 50-yard dash.


Dr. Darrel Apps, daylily hybridizer, retired (Yeah, right!)


An as yet unintroduced daylily, developed by Dr. Apps. Proving sometimes, the best things are not for sale.

I realized after getting into this post that this will be more than a single blog entry, just like the tours I gave today ended up being more than 30 minutes. There was a lot to see and lots of questions, especially since this garden is only three years old, a particularly astounding feat for a garden in central Wisconsin, with our blazing hot, and this year, humid summers, unpredictable rainfall and snow, and frigid winters.

So tomorrow's post will continue with daylily lore legend, and how the world ended up with more that just orange "ditch lilies", a vernacular label Darrel detests.