Page 10 THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, July 10, 2020 Saugus gardens in the pandemic Here’s what’s blooming in town this week to make your walks more enjoyable By Laura Eisener I f there is one thing I hear from people over and over, it’s that they want a low-maintenance garden. I think many people are spelling “low” as “no” and there’s no such thing as a completely low-maintenance garden. Appropriate plant choice is one thing that helps minimize the required work involved. Disease resistance, appropriate growth rate, ultimate size and appropriate horticultural needs for the site are a few things to keep in mind when choosing new plants. Now that we are experiencing some hot and humid weather, we get reminded how unappealing it can be to spend hours weeding, staking, pruning, etc. We look forward to rain as it means one less day we’ll have to water the garden. Saugus is more fortunate than many nearby towns in that the drought has not resulted in severe watering restrictions, so new gardens can still be watered sufficiently for their roots to get established. Another issue that often comes up as people are considering what characteristics they would like in their landscape and garden plants is that most would prefer flowers that bloom for months rather than something that blooms for just a few weeks. It is an unfortunate fact that most perennials – herbaceous plants that come back year after year – bloom for a short time and it takes coordination of bloom times of several different species for a garden to bloom from spring to fall. One of the most dependable summer perennials is both very low maintenance and a long bloomer – reblooming daylilies (Hemerocallis hybrids). Many sunny gardens around town and quite a few of the businesses along Route 1 have had daylilies flowering already for several weeks, and one can expect the blooming to continue for months to come. Reblooming daylily varieties have been available for a few decades and they continue to be popular. ‘Stella D’Oro’ has a school bus yellow flower, about two feet tall, that blooms from late May until November. A more recent introduction is ‘Happy Returns,’ which has a lemon yellow flower and is also a very repetitive bloomer. ‘Pardon Me’ is red and flowers with almost as much regularity through the growing season. More recently a pinkish variety called ‘Rosy Returns’ has become readily available. DAYLILIES AT NORTH SHORE BANK AT LYNN FELLS PARKWAY: Here are some low-maintenance flowers that are coming into their glory at this point in the summer. (Courtesy photos to The Saugus Advocate by Laura Eisener) These don’t need to have their old flower stalks removed in order to keep blooming, and once established they need very little attention at all. They are pest resistant and drought tolerant, will bounce back even after being driven over, and can endure many other kinds of mistreatment. Many old-fashioned daylily varieties are similarly rugged but do not bloom as long – usually just a couple of weeks. The most familiar of these is the orange flowering one blooming so many places this week – it is over 3 feet tall in flower and will out-compete almost any weed. Known as tawny daylily (Hemerocallis fulva), it is often called tiger lily, a name which confuses it with a lily species (Lilium tigrinum) which is orange with spots. The tawny daylily is rarely found in nurseries, and people usually have it in their gardens because a friend or neighbor gave them some, or it was there when they bought the house. Very often, they wind up with more than they want because it spreads energetically. Other daylilies can be found with pink, purple, wine red, or even nearly-white cream colored flowers; however, there are no true blues. Many of the older yellow flowered varieties have attractive fragrances. If you take your neighborhood walk primarily in the evening, you will miss the daylilies because their flowers close up at night. It may appear that they would make good cut flowers with their long sparsely leaved stalks, but if you bring one inside it will close up almost immediately. The only satisfaction they will give in a vase is if you have it outdoors in a sunny spot for a picnic. Daylily flower buds, open blossoms and even wilted flowers are edible. Open flowers with stamens and pistils removed make a great cup for dip, and I have often boiled buds with green beans for a short time to serve as a colorful summer vegetable. They have a very mild flavor and so far I haven’t had anyone say they disliked it; however, be sure you are using daylilies and not any other kind of lily! True lilies are members of a related genus (Lilium spp.) which often has similarly trumpet-shaped flowers, but there are some significant differences. There are many species and hybrids from different parts of the world. The true tiger lily (Lilium tigrinum, now renamed Lilium lancifolium) is orange with dark brown spots, and there are cultivated varieties which have pink or yellow flowers similarly spotted. One way to distinguish true lilies from daylilies if you see them in a garden is to look at the stem that the flower is growing on – if it has a lot of leaves all the way up the stem, it is a member of the lily genus (Lilium) and not the daylily genus (Hemerocallis). Daylilies on the other hand have most of their leaves emerging directly from the ground, with only one or two short ones at the most on the flower stalk itself. True lilies are often bitter and generally not considered edible, although bulbs and occasionally flowers are used in some Chinese cuisine. They are, however, tasty to lily beetles and their offspring, so these lilies are not as pest resistant as the daylilies. Lily beetles are narrow and fire engine red, without the spots that ladybugs have. They lay eggs on the plants in a protective covering of their own excrement so predators don’t eat them, and the larvae that emerge often eat the entire lily plant before moving on. Lilies are less TAWNY DAYLILY AND YUCCA: These plants provide colorful garden sights for a daytime walk. easy to grow than daylilies in gardens since it often requires spray to discourage the beetles or very rapid reflexes to catch the beetles by hand when you see them on the plants. Turk’s cap lilies (Lilium superbum) have upside-down flowers with reflexed (backward curving) petals and got their name from the flower shape and not where they come from. Some decades ago I used to see them and Canada Lilies (Lilium canadense) growing wild in fields and the edge of woods. Both of these North American natives are much less common in the wild since the lily beetle came here from Asia. Easter lilies, a pure white form of trumpet lilies (Lilium longiflorum) can be grown in our gardens but they won’t bloom anywhere near Easter in our climate. An Easter lily kept alive in a sunny window or greenhouse can be planted outdoors after Memorial Day, and in subsequent years can be expected to bloom in early July. All members of the lily family are dangerous for cats to eat. Outdoors they rarely seem tempted, but cat owners should be very cautious about bringing any lily family members indoors where the cat could nibble them or even drink the vase water where the flowers may have been. There have even been warnings about pollen which could get on a cat’s fur and be licked off. Another flower conspicuously blooming right now is the yucca, also known as Spanish bayonet, Adam’s needle, or needle and thread (Yucca filamentosa). For many years it was considered part of the lily family, but taxonomists have now divided that family into 40 smaller ones, and yucca now belongs to the asparagus family. There are almost 50 other species in addition to the one grown in Saugus gardens, all native to the Americas. The Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) is one that is native to the American southwest, with a sizeable population in the Mojave Desert at Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca blooms for a short period, but it is very dramatic with tall flower stalks. The bellshaped creamy white flowers are rarely pollinated in our area because they depend on a particular moth to pollinate them which is not found here. This species is native to the coastal plain from Virginia to Florida, but they are very cold hardy and have no trouble surviving winters in Greater Boston. These plants can live hundreds of years because their tap roots can reach very deep into the soil for water, so they survive droughts most other species couldn’t. Their sharp pointed leaves are evergreen, and some varieties have cream colored or golden stripes which give the plant some additional year-round interest. If you look closely you can see the reason for the name “needle and thread,” because narrow threadlike filaments appear to unravel from the edges of the leaves. These dramatic plants have a mid-century modern look and are good companions for grasses, but they were actually extremely popular in Victorian gardens. Editor’s Note: Laura Eisener is a landscape design consultant who helps homeowners with landscape design and plant selection and placement of trees and shrubs as well as perennials. She is a member of the Saugus Garden Club and offered to write a series of articles about “what’s blooming in town, since so many people have taken to walking the streets in their neighborhoods as a way to get some exercise and get out of the house!”
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