In Soumagne, an old mining town, southeast of Liège, overlooking the Belgium Ardennes, I was faced with 4000 square metres of grazing land to transform into a garden. This was six years ago. To maximize the use of the land, I decided to terrace the southerly downward sloping terrain. Thus I planted out an English rose garden with wide paths. I grew a series of long borders with drifts of flowers. Later I layed a box hedge knot garden. This was inspired from the renaissance heart garden at Château de Villandry, in France. My husband built a pond and erected a gazebo. I nurtured fruit trees, a potager and nursery beds of daylilies. Plants have inspired my passion for gardening especially daylilies.

As a couture textile designer, I was able to use my knowledge of colour and transfer this to my garden. I started my love affair with the daylily, as a suitable plant to complement my roses. Already I had some acquaintance with daylilies from my mother growing them in her garden, in England. Yes I am English but I married a Belgian, so I live here, in Belgium.

I grow both English and American varieties of daylilies. The American daylilies are such hardy robust plants as proved when they were able to travel in the post from America to Belgium. Here, the daylilies survive the severe winters. Sometimes the temperature drops below freezing for days. Yet they have a natural ability to tolerate the wet cold winters and dry hot summers here. I look for strong plants with green lush foliage, elegant flower shapes, laiden with buds for utmost visual impact. I especially like the fluting, angle winged ones, abundant with ruffles. They are so over the top and blousy.

All parts of a daylily are edible. They do not need to be sprayed with chemicals. Here in Europe we have no daylily rust. This is good as the produce from my garden I use for cooking and my children enjoy picking the flowers. Daylilies have a right, to a place in my garden.

Now the bug for daylilies has embraced me! My nursery beds are abundant with 6000 daylilies seedlings and with 160 old and new introductions. Their vibrant colours and heavenly forms are a delight. I have been hybridising daylilies for 4 years now, for my own pleasure. My garden is in perputual change, my next move will be to plant two rows of beech hedge, along the flower borders, to make an avenue down to the gazebo.

Your comments will be warmly received at Lambertphil@skynet.be
and I hope you have enjoyed seeing my progress so far.