Whats New

For many years we have purchased Daylilies from American catalogues after falling in love with the picture only to be disappointed when we see the bloom in the flesh. We have also received calls from our customers when the plant they have purchased doesn’t look quite right. There are many reasons why the real life flower doesn’t always look the same as it is portrayed in the catalogues. Some of these reasons are:

• The actual printing process can alter the colour of the image. This does sound like a cop out but it really is true. Printing professionals have told us on many occasions that every process that an image has to go through can change colour depth and tone, and quite dramatically at times. By the time an image appears in a printed catalogue it has gone through at least 4 stages including the original slide, digitally scanning the slide, producing colour separations, (full colour printing uses 4 separate films!), and then the actual printing.

• The true colour does not show itself until the weather heats up. This is true for many cultivars including, Street Urchin, Chaotic Symmetry, Roses in Snow, Passions Promise. They all look quite ordinary early in the season and only develop the wonderful colour forms of bicolours, borders and eye patterns later in the summer. My advice here is be a little patient and wait for the rebloom before making a judgement.

• Pink Daylilies are never as pink in Australia as they are portrayed in US catalogues. So you could think that some breeders artificially enhance the image during the print process, or they could pump them so full of fertiliser that you could never hope to reproduce the same results in your own backyard. Now all of this can be true of a very small portion of growers but I can tell you right now that the pinks will NEVER be the same for us as our soil does not seem able to reproduce the same clarity of colour that they get so easily in America this may be due to the trace elements in the soil or the soil structure itself all I know is they just don’t “pink up” here.

• Double cultivars that have single blooms- this is a common occurrence with Double Daylilies. Usually the first couple of blooms will be single but by about half way through the scape they should “double up”. Some cultivars are only semi double anyway, in which case they will throw singles, semi doubles and doubles all through the season. Checklists now show the percentage of “doubleness” so you can see if it is a true double or not.

• Single blooms throwing doubles or extra petals. Some single Daylilies can produce the occasional double and this is an indication that their may be a double gene in its makeup. If you want to breed doubles these are wonderful plants to work with because they usually have all their stamens and pistils intact while some doubles are missing these vital structures. The extra petals either relate to a fasciated bud (like a siamese twin where two flowers are fused together) or they are polytepals where they have 4 or 5 petals and sepals therefore making the flower look larger or even square! There are even breeders working right now on Daylilies that are consistently poly, some this may be a new form seen in catalogues in the near future.

• Flower size is smaller than described. Usually this relates directly to culture. That is the way the plant is grown. Flower size, quantity and quality is dependant on the amount of sun, fertiliser and water that your Daylilies receive. Reducing one or all three of these important factors and your flowers will suffer. So if this is happening in your garden, increase the amount (or quality) of fertiliser you apply, move the Daylilies to a sunnier position ( but move only in Winter) or increase the amount of water they receive and all of your problems will be fixed. Additional Sulphate of Potash will also greatly improve flower production, colour and quality. On occasion the last couple of buds on a scape will produce smaller than normal blooms or poorer quality, this is quite normal and it is just because the flower scape has degenerated and the nutrient level required for flower production is reduced. My advice, cut the scape off and let your Daylily put it’s energy into pushing up the next scape with loads of perfect blooms to come.

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Meads Daylily Gardens have always enjoyed our time selling plants throughout the year. With Debbies commitment outside the nursery this year it has become necessary to reduce the number of hours we are open to the public. We will however continue to be flexible enough to meet the needs of our valued customers by happily making individual arrangements for visits outside our regular hours.

October 1 to December 20, 2008
Wednesday to Saturday
9am to 3pm

OTHER TIMES BY APPOINTMENT JUST CALL THE NUSERY TO ARRANGE

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to make arrangements to visit outside these times.

Late last year Debbie was asked to help a customer with supplying plants for her large heritage listed garden in Ascot. The design was done in Melbourne and a Plant List was supplied. In the past we have only supplied the plants on the Plant List that we carried at the nursery. On this occasion we were asked to use our contacts in the Horticultural industry to obtain all of the plants required for this particular job. Now usually after the customer has the designs drawn up, they employ a project manager or landscaper to complete the job. In this case the customer wanted a hands on approach and wanted to oversee the job herself. Not an easy task but very rewarding when it's all finished and she can actually say "I did it myself!" The problem is accessing the Wholesale Plant Suppliers. Generally they do not deal direct with the public, so the only other option is to buy retail. If you only require a few plants then this is a very good option. But if the project is reasonably large and obtaining plants at a good price is a priority then Plant Sourcing is the way to go. We were given the Plant List and obtained quotes from several sources around Queensland and even interstate. Our customer had taken the liberty of obtaining a retail quote from a large nursery so we had something to work from. After several days of research Debbie supplied a quote that was a massive saving of several thousand dollars! Our customer was thrilled and we supplied the majority of the plants over a 3 month period. The job is almost complete and is one of the most magnificent gardens we have even seen.

Since then we have had many calls from clients wanting a similar result. We had so much fun that we have decided to offer this Plant Sourcing Service to all our customers. It's easy just supply the Plant List from your designer and give us a few days to gather a quote together. Most retail nurseries add 100% mark up to plants purchased from a wholesaler. Even after adding our Plant Sourcing fee and delivery the savings to you can be enormous. Take the strain out of running around town trying to track down that elusive feature plant and let us do it for you. You won't be disappointed.

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Meads Daylily Gardens have been developing a line of cream/yellow clivias for the last 15 years or so. We started with plants from Toowoomba and seed from Sydney. We took what we believe to be the best from the Toowoomba line which was the great flower colour, clarity and form and the best from the Sydney line which was the speed of growth. What we hoped to achieve was a good flowering clivia with clean clear colour that flowered at about 6-8 years old. We feel we have come very close to achieving that goal. Clivias are not the easiest plant to hybridise as each generation can take up to 12 years to flower. Which is such a long time to see the results of your labours. Daylilies are so much easier, flowering after only 12 months! The other problem is that the cream or yellow colour is a recessive gene, which means if the tiniest bit of Miniata (orange) clivia pollen contaminates the cream pollen the result is an a head full of orange clivia seed! This was the main reason we withheld selling plants until they flowered, to prove they were in fact cream. Over the years, due to the care and diligence of maintaining a clean environment while hybridising, we have not had an orange clivia flower in the cream seedlings yet. What we have produced is a range of cream clivias with varying form, colour and style at an affordable price. If you want to be specific about shape and colour, you should visit the nursery during September and October and see the clivias in full flower. You can then choose the one that most appeals to you. If you just want something different, but don=t want to pay the price of a flowering plant, and are prepared to wait a year or so for blooms then we have that covered too. We have decided to sell our clivias in three different sizes. Large, Medium and Small. These are good quality plants and are a generous size. We have plenty of stock at present and they are nicely priced, in fact the smaller sized Clivias are better than wholesale!

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We have been running our VIP Club for several years now and we have decided to give it a revamp. Existing VIP members have been collecting Bonus Plant Vouchers over the years and we would invite them to collect their free plants this season. Our 2004-2005 season heralds the start of a new program where we offer our VIP’s a discount on the cost of selected plant purchases made at the Nursery. It has been hard to keep track of the
bonus vouchers and we thought that giving our special customers an upfront discount would be much easier to manage. The joining fee of $20 will easily pay for itself
with the great benefits of our NEW VIP CLUB:
VIP prices or discounts on selected plants
Free catalogue
Regular Newsletter
Preview of all Sales

NOTE: MAIL ORDER VIP’S CONTINUE TO RECEIVE 20% BONUS PLANTS WITH THEIR MAIL ORDERS

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1. Fertilise your Daylilies with Apex and a side dressing of Sulphate of Potash a to promote good growth, late bloom as well as health and vigour
2.Collect Daylily seeds when the pods are browning off. Refigerate for 4-6 weeks before planting out.
3. Remove dead flowerscapes on your Daylilies, remembering to check for proliferations before discarding

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We have recently upgraded our web site again and will continue to do so over the next few months. We have included many more Daylily, Louisiana Iris and Hippeastrum cultivars than we list in our catalogue. We will also be including Bromeliads, Succulents, Clivias and many other bulbs to tempt you over the coming year. So don’t restrict yourselves to just the catalogue if you have access to the internet why not log onto our website and see for yourself. We also list INTERNET SPECIALS regularly that are not available elsewhere.

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We have been selling Bromeliads for the past few years and although these spikey little creatures took a while to grow on us, they are proving to be a worthwhile addition to our nursery. Once again Monica is to blame for starting the collecting craze off and she now has a huge collection covering most of her front garden. We carry Aechmeas,Billbergias, Guzmanias,Neoregelias,Nidulariums, Orthophytums,Vrieseas and Wittrockias. Phew! What a mouthful. All are drought tolerant and most are easy care. Generally pick the right spot, water when you remember and stand back! We don't have them listed on our website yet but feel free to visit the nursery during the season to see the many different varieties. Most are named so you can start your own collection off now. The majority of our Broms are $15, with some of the newer varieties are $20 to $25. We also have several harder to find Bromeliads that are $35. So why not drop by and give these prickly little numbers a go. They certainly do grow on you

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Even though our catalogue lists only 5 different double Hippeastrums, we carry quite a few more of these flamboyant treasures. Doubles are a fairly new development in Hippeastrum breeding and we have been lucky enough to be able to supply many of the newest varieties over the last few years. The following is a list of some of the new doubles we will have available in limited numbers this season for $25:

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What's New (updated DECEMBER 23 2007)