I'm learning to see daylilies with such wide-open eyes now ... and my husband is helping me to look at the daylilies blooming in the garden with a new approach. He doesn't often comment on the daylilies since he finds most of them to be much like each other and thus not especially appealing. But, here is one in our garden that he took the trouble to point out to me last weekend:
Its scape is listed at a higher height, but it cannot be more than 10 inches off the ground, and lays nicely nestled down in the parting of the fan's foliage. My first thought was, oh no, I need to help him understand that the scape is displaying the bloom too low down in the foliage and that I'll need to correct it by crossing it with taller scaped cultivars!
But, I hesitated, took a second look, and found that not only was it beautifully displayed in that way, but it brought a whole new aspect and lush look to the front of the bed where it was planted. The large bloom was matched by the width of the fans, in a laterally balanced way, in the same way a tall scape can be nicely balanced by the height of the foliage.
I really appreciate the larger lower blooms now - glad to have gotten past what gets defined as correct, and will be making sure to include some low-to-low and low-to-medium crosses to explore it more. Now that I can appreciate how lovely they really are I am delighted... the large-and-low splendor of full-sized blooms juxtaposed against those classic fans really adds something very elegant to the front of the border!
