It's all about the daylilies, Part 2

“It was a perfectly simple matter of fact; the garden was to be a learning experience. She had a schoolteacher’s love of accuracy. She would look up everything so there would be no mistakes made and no foolishness.”

-Eudora Welty, remembering Elizabeth Lawrence

For the past ten years, I have been sussing out the identities of the 28 daylilies here in the garden that are original to Elizabeth Lawrence. Even after all that time, 12 remain a mystery. That may not sound like many to figure out, but there are records for 30 daylilies that could fit those 12 plants. There must be a method through this madness!

Well, there is. It’s a work in progress, but it’s a method nonetheless. Actually, it is several methods.

Method 1: visual comparison

This would be wonderfully simple if there were photographs of each cultivar available. I continue to compare what few I can as I hunt down vintage pictures and descriptions. I have studied more than my fair share of vintage plant catalogs!

Method 2: first bloom dates

Thank you, Elizabeth Lawrence, for keeping bloom journals! We have 35 years of Elizabeth’s records to compare with 10 years of mine. This is not foolproof; first bloom can vary as much as a month from year to year. I revisit this data every year, reassessing my previous identifications as well.

Method 3: flower color and type

You might be thinking, “Hey, Andrea, isn’t this covered with Step. 1?” Well, yes and no. (See this post for further insight.) As flower color and form can vary from year to year, this research is also on-going, but has made the fastest progress so far.

Method 4: other details

This includes all types of measurements… from stem and foliage height to flower petal width and length. There’s also foliage type (dormant or evergreen), bloom habit (day-blooming=diurnal; night-blooming=nocturnal) and fragrance. I’ll leave it at that, as I see your eyes are going crossed. On to the last step!

Method 5: compile data

Nerd alert! About six years ago, in an effort to marry historical and current data, I got the bright idea to create a spreadsheet. (I LOVE a good spreadsheet!) This allows me to have all daylily data in one place, and it’s easily manipulated. For example, I can organize according to Elizabeth’s first bloom dates, or by flower color, or by height, etc.… all at the click of a button.

There is more that goes into this than I’m telling you. Part of Elizabeth’s records lie in her writings, so those must be studied as well. Scanning her books for any mention of daylilies is easy. Searching through 523 articles she wrote for the Charlotte Observer between 1957 and 1971 that have not yet been republished is another matter. Thanks to a subscription to newspapers.com, I can find and read them at any time of the day or night! (Elizabeth Lawrence wrote a total of 795 articles for the paper, of which 272 have been republished in the books Through the Garden Gate and Beautiful At All Seasons.)

Like Elizabeth, I have a love of accuracy, so there will be no mistakes made (ha!) and no foolishness.

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Next up, we’ll take a behind-the-scenes look at Elizabeth Lawrence’s studio, the place where she wrote, researched, read and designed.