An Unexpected Gift - Dana's Daylilies

A couple of weeks ago we received a call from a gentleman wondering if we would like to have the garden plants from his property in Dillon.  His wife had been a devoted and enthusiastic gardener for all her adult life and had created extensive gardens he could not maintain following her death a year and a half ago.  I visited the property and saw something impressive, though starting to be reclaimed by Mother Nature.  Dana had been the kind of gardener who kept records! There were diagrams of what was planted where, plant tags and photo albums!  Although most of the garden evolved around the topology of the Georgian Bay rocky shoreline and the home itself, there was a collection of daylilies planted in groups on a grid and a labelled sketch to go along with them. We thought ... SCORE!  Here is an opportunity to plant a daylily demonstration garden much like our new lilac collection.  Visitors can record the names of the ones they particularly like and acquire them for their home gardens.  Although our Garden is starting to have an abundance of flowers, it is much like a cottage garden filled with donated plants divided and shared from garden to garden.

So we accepted the offer and this week went for the daylilies.  On Wednesday morning we prepared places for them to be planted in groups of three around the circle amongst the lilacs at the base of the Tower.

Doing this sort of thing is like setting dominoes in motion.  Those spots had been filled with the spireas and hostas that had been the only plants thriving in the garden when we started gardening 3 years ago.  We had dug them up and divided them (yes, spireas can be divided just like perennials ... any shrub that spreads by runners can) to fill that empty narrow bed.  So we found other places for them.

The spireas made a nice hedge beside the cabin.

and the hostas were divided and potted up to sell at our Garden Days at Tower Hill event.

Wednesday afternoon we hooked up my trailer and headed to Dillon with our spades.  We dug, divided, labelled and packed them tight into the trailer making potting unnecessary.

It was a daunting task, but a great place to spend the afternoon and our gracious donor/host, Don Clement,  helped lug the last of them up to the trailer and provided cold drinks when we needed them!

They spent the next day in the trailer and we planted all of them on Thursday evening.  We spread them out on the grass

and the mosquitoes and blackflies helped us with the sorting, planting and labelling.  And I must say, I'm getting pretty good at backing my van and trailer between the rock walls and up that walkway to the Tower!

The extras were planted in all sorts of places, but mostly in the slope/rock garden between the Cabin and Pond.

We gave them a good drink and called it a night.  They are looking a bit bedraggled but we expect them to perk up in a couple of weeks and to bloom in July.

Thank you Don and Dana for the gift and thank you Gardeners for the extra effort!