Leo Sharp and his daylilies.

Clint Eastwood in the movie, The Mule, holding a bloom of Illinois Majestic (Bill Waldrop)

      Leo Sharp at his Brookwood Gardens (Photograph by Greg Bartoshuk)

   I was fortunate enough to recently see the movie, The Mule, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood.  Clint plays Earl Stone, a 90 year old horticulturist, who is a drug mule for the Sinaloa drug cartel.  This story is based on the real life story of Leo Sharp, daylily hybridizer.  I didn't know that much about Leo, so I did a little research.  Here is some of what I found:

Leo Sharp gained popularity for producing relatively small flowers with vibrant colors. His most popular creation was the Ojo Poco, a 2 ¹⁄₂-inch (64 mm) apricot-colored flower with a red bull’s-eye at the center that he introduced in 1994. "Anyone who has over 100 day lilies in their garden would recognize it by sight," Kevin P. Walek, a former president of the American Hemerocallis Society said. There are 75,378 different day lilies officially registered with the American Hemerocallis Society. The daylily "Hemerocallis 'Siloam Leo Sharp'" is named after him.

Daylily enthusiasts visited Sharp’s flower farm near Michigan City, Indiana where he lived for decades. Sharp’s neighbors in Michigan City recalled buses filled with customers outside his front gate waiting to buy his signature flowers, almost all named after his business, Brookwood Gardens.

Here are some of Leo's introductions:

               Brookwood Ojo Poco (Leo Sharp) Photograph by Tim Fehr

  Brookwood Lee Causey (Leo Sharp) Photograph by Penny Wilkendorf

        Brookwood Wow (Leo Sharp) Photograph by Nikki Keeton Schmith

       Brookwood Black Kitten (Leo Sharp) Photograph by Ann Brickner

Photograph by Greg Bartoshuk

Leo Sharp passed away December 12th, 2016 at the age of 92.  Leo hybridized a total of 182 introductions. (Thank you for that fact Mike Derrow) I never had the opportunity to meet Leo, but I thought that I should do a segment on the daylily blog, since he had a movie based on his life story. I don't know if I will ever see another movie in my lifetime that has daylilies in it, so I enjoyed that aspect of it.  Hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about Leo Sharp. All photographs above are the property of each person who shared them and use without prior consent is prohibited.  I'd like to thank every one who shared their photographs as well.  Thanks for stopping in.