Re: hosta

In a message dated 7/8/02 3:00:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
cherylisaak@adelphia.net writes:

<< I'll say - I don't know how much the last NEDS sale brought in, with 
 all the noise about rust, lots of buyers are running scared! >>

This remark brings me to an offer I have been going to make to you.

I have two daylilies (no rust, no new plants here in five years) given to me 
by Clare Sheppard.

She is dead few years now. She had a sister who lived in Saratoga and would 
come to HADS for some of the August sales.  She also spoke to the group at 
one time. I remember her talk as it was one of the few that did not have one 
million pollen slides.  She had no slides, she was able to just talk and 
entertain.

Clare Sheppard lived up around Saranac in some town worse than mine. You 
cannot get a tomato to ripen up there.  She described how she wanted flower 
borders, big full blooming borders and her location was not the best for many 
zone 5 plants.  She purchased the first daylilies from Stanley Saxton and he 
told her the ones he would sell her were tested in his Tupper Lake (nasty 
place in winter) summer home.

That is is how she began with what they ultimately call historics.  His 
daylilies all bloomed before early frosts. We had a summer home on Indian 
Lake, also Adirondacks, and once had the hose freeze and split on the front 
lawn in July.

Clare Sheppard and her sister had a table at one of the August sales as their 
plants were all "historics" and the group was Stamile crazy.  Melanie would 
get up and speak of DBD (Dance Ballerina Dance) and other acronyms and I 
would never know what she was talking about. I really was never a daylily 
lover in that I could not grow them exclusively nor obsess about them.

Back to Ms. Sheppard.  Nobody was buying her plant or listening to her 
descriptions.  I felt sorry for them and since I was not buying anything at 
that time unless it was white or purple, I was free to listen.  I really 
never found any great white or purple but I kept trying.  I did also get from 
Ms. Sheppard something called, I think, Lilting Lavender, from a man named 
Childs in Gerorgia. I have cut this plant in half so often, it hardly ever 
has a chance to make a few flowers here.

She was a very knowledgeable woman, thought to be out of the loop, but she 
did know what she was talking about.  She told me to buy high bud counts, to 
find plants with smaller rather than larger flowers as they fit into 
groupings better and had better foliage.  Many ideas our group was not buying 
and these plants of hers were over fifty years old. She wanted full season 
foliage.  She showed me that lousy foliaged alliums grew safely with some 
daylilies as voles usually did not find them.  She and her sister (cannot 
remember sister's name - both friends of Sally Millman) were part of the way 
back when begnninng of what became HADS in the l990.

This long winded tale is to tell you that I have a Saxton Red, no idea what 
the name is and it blooms for a long time, starting now here, with small red 
trumpet shaped flowers which do not need deadheading.  It is being done in by 
a Sargent crab so after bloom it gets dug up.  I also have a second plant 
from her which she said was far superior ro Autumn Minaret.  Hers blooms late 
July and blooms into frost.  It is sending up bloomstalks now, it is a yellow 
and very tall.  Ilike this one, too.  It stands down by the vegetable garden 
and does well with grasses, rudbeckias, that kind of thing.  It needs no help 
from me.

Both are being divided which is something I hardely ever do because one is 
being shaded by a crab and the other is coveted by a buddy of mine who I owe 
many favors.

These old ones do not seem to need the water the newer hybrids do.  If you 
want a few chunks of them let me know, I will mail them off to you.  I will 
get around to this after they bloom or while they are blooming.  I do things 
when I have the energy and the days are cool enough.  If I waited for the 
exact right time, I would get nothing done.  

Clare Sheppard had a large labelled collection.  I wonder where it went. 
Probably under the lawn mower, most gardens eventually do.

Claire Peplowski 

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