About Midnight Gardens Daylily Nursery

History: I began growing daylilies in the 1980’s & became fascinated by their beauty & vigor. With very little care, they came back each year with more flowers than the last. In 1996, I decided to try my hand at hybridizing & made my first cross, LITTLE GRAPETTE x PRAIRIE BLUE EYES, just to see what I would get. I have done some hybridizing each year since then to hopefully make improvements upon what is already available & to add to the diversity.

My primary hybridizing goal is to create plants that are good garden performers - vigorous, cold hardy, disease resistant, good plant habits & lots of blooms that open well. To that end, I have been working on compact plants with foliage that looks good even after the first bloom that continue to bloom until frost. My secondary goal is to create unique plants - either in flower form, flower color, plant size, or foliage color. Some of my seedlings have variegated leaves, some have striped flowers, & some have intense bluish tones.

All of my plants are field grown as opposed to tissue cultured, which generally means they will be larger, more vigorous & more likely to be true to name than plants from some of the bigger nurseries. Although Portland is a mild zone 7, we do have some cold winters, so plants that do well here will generally do well throughout most of the U.S.

Daylilies come in diploid & tetraploid - tetraploids have twice the genetic code & therefore tend to have larger flowers & more intense colors. Diploids on the other hand offer more delicate looking flowers & are more likely to produce genetic breaks for the hybridizer. Most of the daylilies that I offer for sale are diploids as these are my preference.

There are both evergreen & dormant daylilies, and all manner in between. In general, evergreen daylilies perform best in the South while dormant daylilies perform best in the North. I prefer dormant daylilies for their cold hardiness as well as the fact that their foliage tends to look cleaner here in the spring.

Care: I plant my daylilies in soil that has been amended with a great deal of organic material. In the hole, I mix in small amounts of bone meal, green sand (for minerals), and water absorbing granules (to protect against drought). I fertilize with an Osmocote type fertilizer once in the spring and may fertilize again before bloom.

Most established daylilies prefer a spot in the garden where they get light most of the day, and all will benefit from generous watering during the heat of summer. Daylilies should be divided every 2-3 years for best performance. I recommend mulching plants in the fall for weed control, moisture retention & soil amendment.

The two biggest daylily pests in my garden are slugs & rodents. Slug bait applied early in the year will give the plants the protection they need. Rodents can be trapped if they become problematic. In some conditions, aphids, thrips, spider mites or rust can cause problems. They are also easily controlled & generally will not kill the plants.

Shipping: The best dates for shipping are generally April 1 through May 15 and September 1 through September 30. If you have a preferred shipping date, let me know and I’ll do my best to meet it.