Solaris Farms™ 2010 Hardy Hemerocallis, Paeonia and Lilium

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The 2009 growing season (last summer) at Solaris Farms was a busy one as we added a large variety of new cultivars to our gardens.  Most notably, the addition of over 60 new Lilium cultivars to our gardens and sales fields were a great deal work, but ever so rewarding.  Many of the new Lilium cultivars will be ready for sales this coming summer and fall.  If you have the opportunity to visit during our summer digging season and would like to add Lilium to your garden,  we will carefully dig them for you at that time, or you can order them for fall to have them shipped.

Many new daylily and peony cultivars have also been added.  We are extremely excited about our new daylily introductions and think that you will find them to be first class garden plants as well.  Peonies are relatively slow growers, but we now have an a great selection of outstanding plants available.  Our tree peony selections are the most unique available in the United States at this time.  We finally have grafted enough of Bill Seidl's originations to make them more widely available and will continue to do so in the coming years.  If you don't grow tree peonies, try one, they are incredible plants.

Below is quick look at what we see concerning Hemerocallis (daylilies) on the market today:

1)  Plant hardiness from many hybridizers is a problem for us here in Northeast Wisconsin.  We've found that most of the new cultivars being introduced lack solid hardiness, even though they are touted to be hardy. 

2)  Much of the genetic material being used in so many programs is repetitive.  Many of the lines are based on a relatively small group of plants and these tend to be tender plants to boot.

3)  The cost of new daylily introductions continue to be unreasonably high.  Thousands of new daylily introductions find the market each year and most are priced in the $100.00 plus range.  We find it difficult to believe that the value of all these new introductions can match the price tag that goes with them.

4)  Our introductions have now reached a point that they are out performing the multitude of new registrations (at least we'd like to think so).

Daylilies that made major impressions this past summer (2009):

Raspberry Sickle (Gossard)...Wonderful light chiffon yellow with a light raspberry eyezone.  Scapes are wonderful, as are the bud counts.  Just beautiful.

Cerise Classic (Adams)...Seems to always show up on our favorites listing.  Super hot pink flowers carried on super branched scapes.  Plants are stout and robust.  A complete plant.

Scratch My Itch (Bremer)...My three clumps bloom wild, twisting, curling flowers from the EM part of the season to the end of the ML part of the season.  Huge show off that bloomed many flowers each day and could not be ignored.  Coral-Orange UF.

Beaucoup Bouquet (Bremer)...This is a 2008 intro that has so much going for it.  The gorgeous red-pink flowers are sunfast and have the clearest color of any red I grow.  The sunfastness makes these blooms standout when most of the other reds have long since given up.  BB is a bouquet bloomer, but bloom for a solid three and half weeks.  Scapes are on the shorter side, but present the flowers well above the foliage.  A can't miss in the garden.

Ruffled Strawberry Parfait (Reckamp/Klehm)...This one always makes my list.  A late flower, RSP is such a wonderfully soft pink polychrome and the edges are highly variable from day to day.  Some days you get nice even knobby edges, other days small teeth and still other days hooks and teeth.  Scapes are great and the foliage is a nice dark blue-green color late in the year.  Just a super plant.

Angel's Realm (Reckamp/Klehm)...A typically colored Reckamp polychrome yellow flower.  What sets it apart is the wonderfully branched scapes with long laterals and the exceptionally fine ruffling.  Not everyone has the same experience with this plant, which makes me believe that  AR may like the heavy clay rich soils we have in eastern Wisconsin.  A show piece in a clump.

Peony Recommendations...

Carnation Bouquet...A herbaceous hybrid that is a blooming fool with outstanding fully double pink flowers.  The plant has excellent foliage and should be widely grown.  A Bill Seidl introduction.

Red Charm...If you don't grow this one, you should.  Huge deep red double blooms that are difficult to match for beauty and performance.

Viking Full Moon...A Bill Seidl intersectional of creamy yellow with light pink highlights.  The plant has excellent foliage and produces a multitude of large single blooms.  We love this plant for the exceptional plant habit throughout the growing season (it makes a handsome shrub out of bloom).

Bartzella...Roger Anderson's timeless intersectional offering is still the best double yellow peony available anywhere.  The plants are excellent growers and produce tremendous quantities of lemon yellow blooms.  The flowers are unmistakably yellow!

Hidden Treasure...Not often available and certainly an uncommon plant.  Flowers are semi-double yellow and expose wonderful light red flares.  The carpels are bright pink tipped.  The plants are very short and sometimes the flowers are hidden, but are excellent for cutting.  A can't miss variety for color and uniqueness.

Pink Luau...I love this little cactus flowered herbaceous plant.  It never fails to produce an abundance of dainty white flowers streaked in pink.

Anna Marie...Perhaps no other tree peony grows so quickly and produces such fine foliage.  The flowers are large lavender singles and the plant makes an excellent shrub.  Very hardy as well.

Angel Emily...Not yet registered by Bill Seidl, this rockii hybrid is the heaviest bloom of any peony we have ever seen.  Our small, five year old plant (which we liberally take scions from every year) had 35 blooms on it this past year.  The stems are very cold hardy and we have not seen any die back on this plant.  Outsanding bright pink flowers with dark maroon/black flares.  Superior in every way.

Hephestos...A Daphnis hybrid that is one of the most striking flowers in the garden.  The buds are as gorgeous as the flower, looking like tightly closed rose buds for a week or more before opening into beautiful semi-double maroon ruffled beauties.  Vigorous growers and foliage is excellent.

Age of Gold...An oldie, but a goodie.   Very double, vigorous and always puts on a show.  This one grows fast and is one of the few tree peonies that can be divided! 

Iphegenia...A really great red flower.  Petals are large and wavy.  Flowers cover the shrubby plants and present themselves better than any other tree peony.  Good growers and plants remain short and rounded.

Yachio Tsbaki...Large ruffled double bright pink flowers.  Leaves have much red in them and the plants are sturdy growers.  Excellent.

There are many other tree peonies that are stunners, so I could go on and on. 

Lilium Recommendations...

The true lilies are have a wide range of shapes and sizes.  Most are of easy culture, but their greatest enemies are deer, rabbits and mice.  Unfortunately, these plants have a very attractive taste to these animals and they can quickly destroy a plant.  If you have trouble with these creatures we recommend protecting the plants with wire or repellent sprays or grow daylilies instead (daylilies aren't as appetizing).

Holland Beauty...Huge fragrant cream flowers flushed with red.  The presentation is excellent and the foliage is a deep blue green.  Biggest flowers of any of the Lilium we grow.  An Orienpet.

Pink Perfection...A trumpet that grows very tall here in Wisconsin and always puts on a great show.  The large lavender pink flowers are held at the top of plants that can attain heights of 8 feet.  The fragrance fills the garden in the evening.

Olina...An asiatic Tango variety.  Deep red with a black central mass that spreads outward.  Strong growers that always are stunning.  A conversation piece for striking color.

Black Beauty...One of first Orienpet varieties developed still a great plant.  Nice purple-red flowers with spots.  Flowers are reflexed and are held high on plants that grow to around 5 feet.