A Glimpse Of The Garden

“A Glimpse Of The Garden” is a miniseries focusing on the heart of a gardener’s work — a special spot, an extraordinary plant, a place of respite, or a place that evokes a heartfelt memory. What is down the garden path of your friends and neighbors? What is down your garden path?

Almost 200 varieties of daylilies turn Emi and David Lydem’s yard into “a fruit salad of color” every July, said Ms Lydem. The past president of the Newtown Town and Country Garden Club started gardening in 1985, and fell in love with the great qualities of the daylily plant.

“I read that daylilies were heat and drought and disease resistant, and I thought that sounded pretty good — easy care,” said Ms Lydem. The flower’s one natural enemy — the deer — is thwarted by deer fence surrounding the property and a generous and regular application of Milorganite fertilizer and repellent.

Reclaiming pieces of woodlands and even where an above ground pool once dominated a portion of the yard, the daylilies now bloom in beds that border the entire house and yard and spill over into additional gardens. They are contained behind gently curving stonewalls built by Mr Lydem, but behind the house, domestic and wild daylilies march down the steep hill, uncontained yet tidy. To add some succession of color throughout the spring and summer, the Lydems have begun adding rudbeckia amid the daylilies. Poppies, foxglove, sedum, hibiscus, cleome, hydrangea, and numerous evergreens round out the daylily gardens, as well.

“I do hate to part with any of the plants,” Ms Lydem admitted, “but I had a wonderful visit with [local gardener and writer] Sydney Eddison last summer and she told me that if any of her daylilies doesn’t ‘perform,’ that she replaces it or gets rid of it. Now I’ve started to do the same, even though it goes against my nature.”

The daylilies’ names are as colorful as the flowers themselves: Golden Chance, Pixie Beauty, Lime Frost, Country Club, Big Spender, Local Talent, Amber Beauty, Lake Norman Sunset, Fruit Loops, Custard Delight, Milk Chocolate, and Laughing Water, to name just a few.

Dear Dad and Block Island are two varieties that Ms Lydem has collected that hold a special meaning to her. “When our kids were little, we used to vacation every summer on Block Island, so I had to get this one when I saw it,” she said. Dear Dad was a daylily that she bought following her father’s stroke.

The blossoms are every shade and every combination of red, pink, orange, yellow, white, and peach, placed to delight the eye of the beholder. “I’m not sure if I have a favorite,” Ms Lydem said. “It’s like your kids. Which one is your favorite? They are all so great,” she said. But if pressed, she would gravitate to the Outrageous daylily, a deep orange flower with an equally deep red center. “I’m also pretty fond of Zagora,” said Ms Lydem, pointing out a blossom of purplish-pink petals with a maroon and gold center.

The gardens are a joint effort between herself and her husband, said Ms Lydem. “When I need brute strength, I call on David. And he has made the butterfly houses that are in the gardens, and several of the benches, as well as the stone walls,” she said.

What the Lydems like best, though, is to spend a whole day working in the gardens, and then at the end of the day to relax in the screened-in porch at the side of the house. “We look out over the fruits of our labor, marveling at each and every daylily and how beautiful they are,” she said.

That is what is down the garden path at the Lydems.