Tags: 2011, Daylilies, Meeting, Season 2011-2012, William Wilk

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The Malibu Garden Club was pleased to have William Wilk from the Los Angeles County Arboretum at our November meeting.

Bill is a retired university chemistry professor, but throughout his life botany has been his real interest. Currently, he has about 600 registered daylily cultivars in his yard, and five years ago he started hybridizing new ones. He believes hybridizing daylilies is very rewarding and allows artistic and biological challenges to create new plants with spectacular blooms – ones never seen or grown before. The Hemerocallis genus allows great variety each generation through normal hybridization – similar to the variety in the world of dog breeding.

Bill says mature daylilies bloom up to three times per year and at least one daylily is in bloom in his garden any day of the year. His garden soil is heavy clay which daylilies and plumeria don’t like, but they do well in a mix of commercial potting soil, sand, perlite, and fine redwood chips and grown in plastic pots. He controls water retention (by hand watering with a hose), fertilizer, and even daylight levels by moving the pots between full sun and partial shade.

He is a member of several clubs and organizations:

• AHS (American Hemerocallis Society), life member
• SCHAS (Southern California Hemerocallis and Amaryllis Society, Los Angeles area)
• Nor-Cal (Northern California Daylily Club)
• BADS (Bay Area Daylily Club – San Francisco)
• CSSA (Cactus and Succulent Society of American)
• Sunset Succulent Society (West Los Angeles)
• Southern California Horticultural Society

In addition, he is a Garden Judge with the AHS. A Garden Judge does not judge gardens but individual daylily plants on a yearly basis. Daylilies are checked for good character: fast growing, good increaser, branching scapes, good color flower, a good proportion of flower to plant, and so on. Individual plants among a list of hundreds can be awarded: Award of Merit (twelve winners), or Honorable Mention (many winners), or Stout Silver Medal Winner (only one winner) each year. The Stout Silver Medal Award has been given each year since 1950, and the Daylily Garden at the L.A. County Arboretum has an example of each – many are truly great daylilies that still please growers.

The Daylily Garden at the Los Angeles County Arboretum is a registered AHS Display Garden and Historical Garden and is the only registered daylily garden in our area. The best time to see daylily blooms is middle May to middle June which is the height of daylily bloom.

Bill also brought daylily seedlings for everyone to take home!