Growing Daylilies Together

   I started collecting daylilies in 1995.  My mother, Lanny Morry, had started her collection when she was very young.  I was hooked on flowers by the age of six or so, due to my mother and grandmother taking me to our wonderful open tourist gardens in our region.  As an adult, Pat and Grace Stamile and John Peat influenced my interest. I started hybridizing in 1999 when I fell in love with Pat Stamile's STRAWBERRY CANDY.  We had just lost our $100,000 orchid breeding collection to the 1998 ice storm.  My mother and I decided we needed to grow what we could grow in our own backyard. 

Most of the first cultivars we bought were old world dormants from the 1950's through the 1980's.  Plants such as 

ROYAL MOUNTIE, JAMES MARSH, EL BANDITO and WEDDING BAND.  We then--as all hybridizers do--became more focused on what lines we each bought and bred with. Mostly cultivars out of the Bill Munson family of breeders such as Ted Petit, John Peat, Bill Munson, John Rice, Lorraine/Lycette, and a couple more.  We then began to blend in the lines of Pat and Grace Stamile heavily, and the other southern gang soon after.

My daylily business, Avalonia Daylilies, is developing a reputation for taking old dormant cultivars from many years ago and blending them with jumbo ruffles to get a neon ruffled tall dormant tet.  I am into cutting- edge ruffles and colour. Our schedule for operation is from the first week of June until frost hits.  Open for visits without appointments needed 7 days a week--anytime during daylight hours. What I enjoy most about daylilies is colour, form and edging!  I mostly enjoy creating something that I didn't expect to get.  I live for what has become Christmas for me--seedling blooming time.  I also live to paint them.  I was stumped for subject matter at times before daylilies.  Now all I want to paint is daylilies, and I have more subject matter than I could paint in a million lifetimes.  I am a happy man.
 
I am a long-standing and active member of The Canadian Hemerocallis Society-CHS  in which I photograph events, head the Art Division and serve as the Youth Liason and as a mentor to children in the CHS. I am also a long-standing and active member of The Ontario Daylily Society-ODS, The American Hemerocallis Society and also a newer member of The British Hemerocallis and Hosta Society.  I serve as an Editor here on My Daylilies and moderator 16-18 of my own groups and am an overall senior moderator for all forums.  All the Editors are moderating over all the groups in unison.  It is a great system. I try to help everyone that needs a push in the right direction or proper advice  I am presently mentoring over a dozen adults and 4 youths.  

I have not attended a national convention yet but  I have donated prints and plants for them.  I will do one at some point, but they always come when I am in deep in gardening in either Orange Lake with B rother John or in Ottawa later on in the season.  I will get to one.  I do many other events though and have a growing list of clubs and societies I have agreed to do a presentation for.  I try to never turn down a club.  I also try to hit every event in my surrounding region as often as I can.   
 
My mentors and very supportive friends feed my daylily addiction. My mother, Lanny Morry, Greer Knox, John Peat, Phil Reilly, Pat and Grace Stamile, Ted Petit, Barry Matthie, Tony and Susie Thompson, Luddy Lambertson, Bill Maryott, Bob Faulkner, Jamie Gossard and Bill Waldrop have all given me so much time and help.  I owe them the world.  None have ever given me bad or untrue advice.  John Peat has been my main mentor since 2001.  I am forever thankful to him.  All of these people reel me in, bring me down to reality or aid me time and time again.    I also have to add Nina Waters, Cary Peterson and Becki Pavlik, who are also serious players in keeping me busy and down to earth.  They reel me in a great deal too.
  
My goals as a hybridizer is this, my perfect plant.  It is an 8-10 inch flower on a 35-45 inch scape.  It has 5-7 way branching with the rarer 6-7 buds per branch.  I want it in neon colours or black as can be with a 2 inch edge.  It must never, ever blemish or show colour breakups anywhere at anytime.  This flower must also never fold in moderate rain, severe heat or drought.  It has to also be polymerous and sculpted.  In the middle of it all, I want a complex 6 or 8 coloured pattern.  The plant must be super fertile with double fertility and high seed counts.  They must be strong vigorous cultivars that survive both my garden and much of the south and  must have a green throat.  I will accept other neon colours of throat too, such as a gaseous orange.  This is what I am breeding for.  I am mixing programs back and forth.  I obviously have 4 or 5 programs going and they will at one point all meet in the middle.  I want complex, tall plants that always look good--even the end of the day.  Ten more generations and I may be slightly happy.  Until then consider what I am doing is just a work in progress.

Mick Morry
3901 River Rd.  RR3
Manotick, Ontario, Canada, K4M-1B4

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AHS Region 4-Zone 4b/5