Many of you know that I grow roses. I started out with some hardy landscape type roses (double knockout) and a litterly carefree shrub rose called Carefree Delight. I wasn't going to go for the fancy roses, as I thought of them, that required spraying and fussing. But as fate would have it a local Long Island lady that was well known for her fabulous rose garden was having an open garden and on the rose forum invited anyone who was in driving distance to attend. I went. It changed the course of my garden. One of those moments in history. She had mostly Austins and old garden roses. I had never even seen roses that look like that. That garden was so stunning there were no words. On the way home, I stopped at a local well known rose growing nursery and bought some roses that as near as I could figgure out, looked like hers.

Its now about six years that I have had roses and I found my tastes totally changed. I found what I like thru trial and error. I tossed out just about all the Austins that I tried and I never could stand old garden roses. Instead what I love (and what works for me) are old garden rose look alikes, shrub roses and lots and lots of Floribundas. I now have a truely nice rose garden but it is about as different as you can get from the garden that inspired my rose crazies.

So what does this have to do with daylilies? Just as in roses, it takes some time (or at least it did for me) to learn and see what I like the best and what works the best for me in my garden. My taste in daylilies has changed quite dramacticly from those first daylilies I bought in 2007. And thats not even very long ago.

I was just out in my front yard yesterday and today. Looking at the new Westbourne daylilies starting to bloom and just going ga-ga over how beautiful they are. They have colors and blendings of colors that are just stunning. Not much in edges, some of the flowers are big but most are average size.

Same thing going nuts these past few days over my Melanie Mason intros blooming. Rich vibrant colors but not much edge and at least for the ones I have of Melanie's no strong eyes. I love, love, love them.

The ones I am compairing them too are the front yard daylily section up on top of that s sectioned curved wall in the front yard. Mostly Florida type evergreens put in in 2007. With the exception of THESE EYES, which is purple, mostly softer colors. I don't like the grouping. Not enough color for me. Lots of boring edges. Too much look alikes. Been thinking on it these past few days and going to move in some stronger colors from the last row of the Plateau as it needs thinning anyway and going to rearrange that section some.

If I had to do it over again, I would have my favorite northern hybridizers daylilies on that plateau in back and forget almost all the southern daylilies. I no longer buy the southern daylilies. Yet there are strong exceptions to the rule that both look and do marvelously here (think PRETTY GAUDY and many Maryott intros) that I guess things work out for the best.