18 Mar 2013 Art in the garden
by Janna Virden
Arkansas gardeners are on the lookout for plants that can tolerate extremes and still be beautiful in response to the past few growing seasons.
Perhaps they need look no further than a tried and true perennial that tolerates drought, is resistant to diseases and pests, easy to grow and comes in a rainbow of colors. The plant is the daylily, also known as Hemerocallis.
Pat and Patricia Larsen of Conway are helping make the daylily even more diversified in form and beauty. Each year, the Larsens create fantastic new varieties of daylilies in their display garden in Conway through a process known as hybridizing. Some of those new varieties may find their way through growers into Arkansas and American gardens.
“We grow plants because we love the flowers and seeing what we can do with them,” Pat said.
Both Pat and Patricia come from gardening families. Pat said his parents liked to grow unusual flowers and hybridized flowers as a hobby. He said when he was young his mother asked him to help weed, but he told her he didn’t know a weed from a flower. That is when his gardening education began.
When Pat and Patricia started dating at age 16 she liked to wander through his mother’s yard looking at the flowers. “I used to follow her around in the garden, and she wore these short shorts,” Pat said with a grin.
Now both are retired, but they still are wandering side by side in their own garden looking at the new varieties of daylilies they have hybridized and cataloging their seedlings. It is a true partnership.
“We have always been interested in gardening and being outdoors,” Patricia said. “Pat does the heavy work, and I do the paperwork.”
Their journey into the hybridizing began around 11 years ago when Patricia wanted Pat to go with her to visit Joel Stout’s garden and nursery. Pat said he didn’t want to go. He finally said yes, but was determined to just sit in the car. However, when they arrived, he said his life changed. “I saw a field of daylilies, and I was hooked.”
Pat, who is a retired art professor from the University of Central Arkansas, looked at the fields full of breathtaking color and recognized art in the form of flowers. So far the two have registered seven daylily varieties with the American Hemerocallis Society (AHS) with such names as Toad Suck Red, Hog Wild and Arkansas Renegade. Patricia said those names are “very localized,” and she didn’t think anybody else would have Toad Suck as part of a flower name.
Both Pat and Patricia said hybridizing is a fairly simple process, and in fact they have taught their grandchildren how to take pollen from one flower to pollinate another one in order to develop a new cross. However, to produce a new variety of flower that is registered with AHS takes around four years with exacting detailed information.
“We produce around 2,000 new flower seedlings each year,” Pat said.
They then select 70 or so for continued evaluation to see if the new variety of daylily will meet certain standards and be “true to form.”
“We’ve gotten more selective in what we want to register,” Patricia said.
During the growing season, Pat and Patricia rise early to carefully take pollen and make their crosses. Each selection is labeled and filed. Sometimes the pollen is frozen to be used at a later date. Then they wa
it months to see if a seedpod forms. If the daylily produces, the seeds are stored and then planted early the next year in the Larsens’ green house. When the seedlings are big enough, they are transplanted to the garden. Then the waiting period begins again and goes through the next growing season.
“It’s not a done deal,” Pat said. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”
After waiting so long, both Pat and Patricia said the anticipation of seeing that first flower from the hybridizing effort is wonderful. “It is really fun to see the seedlings flower for the first time.”
Beginning in May throughout the summer their garden bursts with color and surprises, each day bringing a new variety of daylily into bloom. It is simply a beautiful palette of nature.
