I enjoy the tall ones. I have played with breeding them, although I do very little crossing these days. I used Notify Ground Crew as one parent in my first set of crosses, and then have been using those first seedlings in crosses since. One of those first seedlings is the biggest daylily PLANT I have ever seen. The foliage is easily 4-1/2 feet tall. The clump is huge. It was moved from the seedling bed into my perennial border, and has grown so large, I can't get anyone interested in helping me try to dig it up. We joke that I am going to have to hire a backhoe. Scapes bloom at least 5' and last year it had over 75 scapes with most scapes having bud count of at least 45. That is a LOT of blooms for one plant. However -- the flower is plain, soft lemon yellow, rather small and opens at 11 pm and starts closing late afternoon the next day, but smells wonderful when I used to work and come home 2nd shift! Some of the siblings have smaller plants, but they are not in as nice of soil, so that may be a factor. Better branching, and bigger, prettier flowers that are open all day, and better color. I will probably name at least two of them, perhaps this year. I have been crossing them to the "voluptuous" big yellow Tets, to increase flower size and beauty. The scapes on these two siblings are quite substantial, so I think they will be pretty nice. I am especially hopeful of the cross of one of them to John Rice's fabulous GOOGIES, and to Santa Lucia's HIGH ROLLER.
The two I would like to name are bud builders, but the one that is the huge plant only bud builds part of the time. Some of the other siblings bud build. I don't think the bud building comes from Notify Ground Crew, though, I think it comes from the other parent, which is a 100% reliable bud builder. It is a seedling of a friend of mine.
As far as how to use them in a landscape…. my neighbor, who I speak of often here, is a perennial garden designer, and she and her husband install and maintain perennial beds. They have many huge perennial borders to show customers, and they are beautiful. She was not into daylilies at all when they moved into the neighborhood years ago. But, I have given her a lot of daylilies, and now have her converted to using them. If you click to see all of this photo…. to the very far right of this bed, you will see Notify Ground Crew anchoring this corner. There is another pink daylily there too… about half it's height. If I remember correctly, that is ABSOLUTE TREASURE, which I think grows about 30" here.
And, here is Curt Hanson hybridizing in some of his tall ones - he's been working to get the height in his reds and purples, and get the colors clear. For the longest time, the really tall ones only came in yellow or in muddy colors. You can see "normal" height daylilies, in bud, in the foreground.
I have grown Webster's Pink Wonder. I found the blooms a bit to large for the scape and plant. I like tiny blooms on tall scapes, like Nutmeg Elf - but the huge blooms -- I don't know…. they don't appeal to me as much. However, I do really like Judy Davisson's Loud Girls, which has WPW as a parent. The balance on the plant seems better to me, and it has richer color. Loud Girls must be a strong plant as well. A friend gave me a little tiny fan that fell off when he was going to ship out a piece to a customer. I planted it, thinking it would never make it, as it was in fall. Well, it grew, and even tried to bloom the following summer, but I pinched off the scape. By the next year, it was three fans.
