The Volunteer Daylily

daylily_volunteer

We call them ditch lilies here, a disparaging double entendre that eludes to their place in the proper garden plant hierarchy as well as their preferred wild landscape.

It came into my garden uninvited, an opportunist that hitched a ride in some little pot of earth alongside another plant, probably something gifted or bought at a horticultural society plant sale.

I knew what it was as soon as the leaves appeared. Day lilies were one of the first edible flowers I foraged back in high school under the instruction of a library withdrawal whose title I no longer recall. Years later I planted a small patch of them in the Guerrilla Garden, a hand me down from a friend’s mom’s garden. They soon took over a chunk of that space and I can recall a hot summer day spent pounding at the hard, compacted soil with a shovel in an attempt to thwart their imminent takeover. Some strangers came by in a car and offered up a plant they had just dug out of their own garden (I can’t recall what it was) in exchange for a few clumps that I was all too happy to give away freely. It’s not that I don’t like day lilies — I like them much, much more than most. Were my garden a sprawling farm, I’d have some nice large stands of them in all sorts of colours. But here, in a small urban yard where land is at a premium, one has to get honest about space, and anything this pushy and downright uncooperative has got to go.

Still, when the leaves appeared in the very worst spot, right at the front of the garden and dead centre inside a peony, I said to myself, “I’ll let it go to flower just to see what they look like. They’re edible after-all. Maybe I happened upon a unique variety.” And I did, sort of. It is an orange, double flower. And it is pretty.

And then the leaves grew beyond the height of the peony and it did not look good right there in the middle, but still I let it go. And then the flower stalk appeared, shooting up higher than anything else in sight. It was bad garden design. The very worst: a clumsily placed plant growing out from the centre of another plant, smack dab in the front of the garden. This is why you will never see my garden in a fancy magazine. I let curiosity get the best of me. I lack the ruthlessness required to properly edit and cull.

From then on the flower’s stalk grew more present, but I still couldn’t do what needed to be done. Each time I held up my camera to document the garden I was confronted by some part of the daylily, right there in the frame. I tried repositioning and reframing the scene to get around it, but the stalk only grew taller, the flowers larger, and they were ever present, hogging the spotlight. A real showboat. I was more willing to put myself out than pull out the little day lily that could. Who does she think she is anyways? Just some common, humble weed that doesn’t belong. I anthropomorphize plants and over-identify with the underdog. Because I too am humble, of the lower classes, and don’t belong. I also deign to stick my nose out and demand a place of prominence that I haven’t earned by pedigree. Sometimes gardening plays out in my head as a morality tale about class, injustice, and social order and I guilt myself into keeping plants I don’t want simply because I can’t bear the thought of tossing it to the compost bin.

A year passed and the daylily stayed put. My new(ish) next door neighbour inherited a clump from the former owners. She abhors the things and told me so repeatedly before digging them out once and for all. This only strengthened my resolve to keep the little big lily and so it stuck around another year. Another year of shifting my camera to accommodate a single, out of place, flower stalk. Finally, one day, sick of framing and reframing the scene, I gave in and took this shot. The flower finally got its place in the spotlight. And yes, it is still there now, dormant in the frozen ground and replenishing in order to come back harder. I expect the whole drama to play out again this spring when those leaves appear, again, standing straight up, pushing itself out from inside the peony and right up front in a place of prominence where it deigns to defy me as if to say, “I belong.

Gayla Trail
Gayla is a writer, photographer, and former graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author, photographer, and designer of best-selling books on gardening, cooking, and preserving.

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15 thoughts on “The Volunteer Daylily

  1. I love them. To me they represent beauty without fuss. The ability to endure hard winters and benign neglect in the summer when the garden and life get away from me.
    They represent the Canadian spirit: dig in, adapt, survive, prosper and bring joy.

  2. Great story! I will now consider my inability to rid myself of unwanted plants a morality tale. Gardening does provide a great venue for deep thinking.

    I am sure you are aware, but most daylilies are completely suitable for a small plot. What you have there looks like Hemerocallis fulva ‘Kwanzo’. It does not set seed and so it’s only means of propagation are those crazy roots, which is good if your recipe calls for daylily tubers. The hybrids on the market today originated from a different species which does set seed, and they are much more easily contained.

  3. Great post! I too lack the resolve to banish “Volunteers” in my garden. It is like mother nature herself has given you a gift , and to banish it just seems downright inhospitable!
    This last year alone, I cultivated a huge crop of ” volunteered” Purslane which apparently hijacked a ride with the compost. It took over the front garden and , me being me, I did not have the heart to take it.
    I hmmmmed and hawwwwed , and wondered what I should do. Finally, I resigned myself to its new found home, and I thought that I might be able to gather some for a salad. However, the bunnies soon found it, and it was decimated. Kind of like life, our gardens. The minute you decide you like something just the way it is, BAM; a surprise volunteer arrives to throw all your plans into the wind.

  4. Nice post. It’s always a balancing acting trying to maintain a bit of control. I’m glad you left it (for now). It is pretty and does look a bit defiant. There is a kind of dignity in the natural world.

    I think a bit of chance and serendipity let us see things in a new way.

    I can’t grow daylilies here, that deer mow them down. I like them tho’.

    How do you use them as an edible? Are they tasty?

    Cheers,
    Trevor

  5. Another thoughtful meditation on why we garden. When a neighbour expressed disapproval of the apparent disarray of my streetfront garden last summer (which includes some brazen day lilies) I realized it was the thriving community of birds and bees, damselflies and tree frogs that I was more interested in pleasing and that provide me with plenty of positive feedback to keep experimenting

  6. Found your website this summer and have greatly enjoyed all your writing, also this post. I was so glad to see you come back later in the year and I am happy to see you’re better. I once bought a number of low growing blue-eyed Mary plants (Omphalodes verna) from a garden center to use as ground cover. I noticed that one of the plants had a surprise visitor that I first could not recognise but which later turned out to be a chestnut-leaved rodgersia, a giant compared to what I actually had bought! I had to separate this strange pair, but both are doing well in the garden now and I don’t mind at all that the plant nursery gave me this extra bonus!

  7. I agree with Karen, it resembles the famously double “Kwanso” daylily, whose heritage includes the Ditch Lily, making it a lateral fast mover with long stringy orange roots. I got some for free 23 years ago at our Master Gardener Plant Swap Picnic. They were called “Double Irish” in that exchange. I later saw them at an exquisite nearby daylily farm and the owner explained their name and heritage.

    http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/348876/

    I put some “Kwanso’s” in large decorative pots one year and really liked the display. Right now they are meandering on both sides of a fence and interfering with some other preferred plants, skating on thin ice. However, their orange tones contrast strikingly with self sown purple Larkspur and make the observer’s eye vibrate. The patch I installed at my Mother’s has been steadily consumed by deer and she has not seen too many flowers. ‘Kwanso’ blossoms are showy with their multiple petals and reddish accents. I’m glad I have them but they need to be watched.

  8. That “I belong” sentence at the end was pretty tough. I like it.
    And without the story, and reading this blog for quite some time, I would have thought that foto belonged to some fancy-pants garden.
    I’d be interested in seeing the progress of those leaves showing up inside the peonia in spring, really. o:

  9. Just read this post and it reminded me of a plant I bought at a nursery that came with a “volunteer.” I knew it was not a weed so I left it alone and then promptly forgot about it. Imagine my surprise when later that summer a vine complete with several summer squash was growing happily among the daylilies and rudbeckia!

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