Melissa,
What a great way to maximize a quality yield. It is possible a neighbor might have something blooming, if I remember this correctly; some bees have been known to carry pollen from as much as a two mile radius. But let's bee honest, they usually just go from one bloom to the next plant over. I've observed fairly good isolation in the seed I've collected from bloom gatherings separated only by my front and back yard. Three years back I put 'Pacific blue Ice' and 'Thunder' together in the front yard and 'Shirley's Joy'/'Watermark King' in the back, the seedling groups (which are now mature) yielded ~3/100 watermark type reds in the pbi batch and ~3/35 blues in the watermark batch. Self crossing tends to make up the majority of bee seed, the shirley's joy batch was probably 80-90% self crossed, the watermarks looked to be about 70% selfed and pbi/thunder were somewhere in between. I'm crossing with one of my own selections of 'gold nugget' now, pretty much using my own seedlings exclusively this season, I think I maybe used three outside cultivars in breeding all summer long. There are really some fantastical plants here, I just haven't had the numbers (per variety) to market anything yet. Let me know if you ever want to drop by my main beds in North Portland, my garden is less of a showcase than yours and more of a workstation but it's no doubt full of gems I think you'd appreciate. That goes for you too Lynn.
Best of luck on your experiment! I'm sure you'll get some gorgeous plants,
-Sol
