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Welcome to Slightly Different Nursery!
NOTICE:
Our property has been sold, and the nursery/gardens/grounds are now closed to the public.
(Website is currently being maintained for reference/archive reasons only)
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International speaker, community activist, and daylily hybridizer of MANY award-winning daylilies!
Be sure and check out the "Our Gardens" photo page - we breed for SHOW daylilies, in a REAL landscape!
Beginning in PA (z5) in 1995, our breeding goal has consistently been to increase overall daylily physiology - size/dimension/performance/vigor/branching/bud count. Huge blooms of saturated color are a must for our 6-year field tested (for cold tolerance, drought resistance, and rapidly reblooming) daylilies... before they even get a name! Happy to announce our H."Eminent Domain" has just won the "Best Extra Large Flower" in commerce, as mere example of such steadfast work!
Located on what was originally a 106-acre Thoroughbred horse farm in the beautiful rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, we've certainly found a "slightly different" spot to hybridize/showcase thousands of gorgeous daylilies... in an actual diversified garden!
Our "Daylily Story", of what makes us "Slightly Different"...
Our first registered year as wholesale growers/hybridizers of unusual perennials in the Pocono Mountains (NE Pennsylvania) was 1995, when we'd already won 8 patents for hybrids in other genre, and begun collecting daylilies for propagation/re-selling. Our endeavors with daylilies began with over 1300 named cultivars to hybridize with from other daylily breeders (a hard to maintain inventory, as most of the "modern" daylilies at the time would die their first Winter in the field), our first major crop of (over 5K) seedlings from the hardiest of that lot finally became mature clumps in 1998... and though a very tough start, we've been HOOKED on garden performance ever since!
Our "Slightly Different" hybrids are judged (and award-winning) to be superior in regards to their overall hardiness, drought tolerance, sun resistance, and above all... garden performance (especially in northern conditions). MOST different about our program, is that we breed for specimen plant habit during the entire growing season... not just a single flower that will look good in a sales "mug shot" (first helpful hint: If all you want is a pretty picture of a daylily, you can "right click" and "save" for a lot less money - I've made them accessible!). While there are over 40,000 daylily plants here on the farm at any time, NONE have been growing under "artificial" conditions (greenhouse, shadehouse, chemical fertilizers, insecticides, or soils rating higher than "average" in any common garden). Because we grow our daylilies in natural conditions, and in an extremely diversified garden (over 3K other types of perennials/trees/shrubs - most from our own breeding), our plants are incomparably best suited for your REAL garden. Even with decades of hybridizing experience (and including other species), only ~1 in 700 seedlings meet our performance standards... and are selected for naming, after being grown/moved around for an average of 6 years before being introduced (to insure hardiness, as these days they will surely be subject to about every "extreme" imaginable in so much time). This method takes a full 3-4 years more than most commercial farms, but since it was the "hardiness" of daylilies that we loved so much to begin with, we refuse to budge on our overall cultural requirements for introduction... even if it costs substantially more to do it this way! Using our concept, we can truly offer folks a hybrid plant that is one of a kind, will perform as we state it will, and thrive under ever-changing garden conditions. In addition to all this, and unlike any other daylily hybridizer, we spend additional hundreds of hours annually in trying our best to portray our plants as they appear overall in a natural garden setting... via our photography. Can you buy daylilies "cheaper" elsewhere? Of course you can. Will the seller have put as much effort into considering you and your garden? God bless 'em, but... No. We do as much work for our "general cultivars" as well (plants we carry from other hybridizers), which should be an example of how much we care more about what you receive... than any other seller. We've done the hard part for you (learned from costly gardening mistakes), and admit freely that we're geared towards gardeners that can appreciate that fact. Indeed... "Slightly Different", yet a far more "realistic" and personal approach to YOUR success in your own (and very real!) garden!
We encourage you to visit our nursery, and enjoy the visual diversity for yourself! Our peak daylily bloom season is from early-mid June to mid July (check calendar for "Open Garden" dates/times), although there's much to see earlier/later in the year in the gardens should those dates be hard to make. Please refer to the "Hours/Events" (under "Categories") for general calendar info, or call (704)477-9939 to make an appointment to stop by. In ANY case, we hope to see you soon!
The links to the left provide quite a bit of information on our nursery, check 'em out!
Paul Owen