A visit with Clyde Grammon from Louisiana.

 
                         Clyde Grammon Future Intro Everyday Harlequin

                          Clyde Grammon Future Intro Everyday Harlequin

     I believe it was 5 or 6 years ago I saw an auction on
The Lily Auction for an appliqued daylily called Everyday Butterfly.  It was being auctioned off ahead of it's introduction and the stock was very limited, so I gave it my best bid and won the auction. I got to know the hybridizer, Clyde Grammon through emailing in the preceding years. Clyde was very friendly, happily offering information on his introduction and sharing his experiences with it.  Even though we have never officially met (yet), I am happy to have Clyde as one of my many Facebook friends.  After seeing some of intros and future intros, I thought it was time that all of you got to know Clyde better.  So with nothing further here is my segment with Clyde Grammon:

Introduction written by Clyde Grammon.

I was born, one of seven children in the Yakima Valley of Eastern Washington. I was privileged to grow up on a farm in a valley ringed with apple orchards. I’ve fallen out of more fruit trees than most folks have seen. Growing up on seven acres in Wapato, Washington, we milked cows, raised beef calves, chickens, rabbits, and a huge vegetable garden. After high school, I was studying for the ministry, living in Arvada, Colorado, when I met Carrol Anne—all the way from Louisiana—who was attending a youth conference in the Colorado mountains. Basically, though we ministered 8 years in Oregon and Indiana, I followed her home, and we’ve lived on a farm in Louisiana, with our three kids, (all now married), and now, four grandkids, for the most part, since 1982. In fact, I was forty-two years old when I realized a guy could grow something other than edibles, lol. 

1.How did you first get interested in daylilies? Clyde: We had transferred to Central Louisiana in December of ’94, and we purchased four acres in Ball, (North of Pineville), LA in early 1995, and select cut 110 mature longleaf yellow pines, in the first year. I turned to Carrol Anne and asked, “What can we grow that we can’t kill?” She said “daylilies!”, because their transformer had blown up and spewed hot oil on all of their roses and daylilies, when she was a kid, and none of the roses, and all of the daylilies, survived! 

I was driving down the Expressway in Pineville, just a few weeks later, and saw a bright chartreuse sign on the edge of the highway that said, “Daylilies for Sale”. It was actually a TRAIL of signs that led to the home and gardens of Currie and Brenda Fontenot, in Tioga, LA, a neighboring community. Basically, I kept going back, and trying to fill up the spaces in our yard, until one day, Currie made the mistake of  
showing me how to pollinate a daylily, to create new varieties.

“Worse” than that, he and Brenda invited us to attend a Cenla Daylily Society meeting, and the rest is the basic story of hopeless addiction. 

Our first seedlings were impressive, [to me], but nothing like what was to come in 2010, when the first seedlings from a cross I made between the only two appliqués we owned, bloomed for the first time: ‘Spacecoast Sea Shells’, a gift from another couple in our club, Jay and Belinda Fontenot, and its parent, I already had, ‘Catcher in the Eye’, both of them Kinnebrew intros. were the parents.

2.Which daylily hybridizer or hybridizers influenced you in the beginning? Clyde: Most of our early cultivars were Stamiles and Salters, until Larry Grace came on the scene. Then, Ted Petit and John Peat presented at our Fall Symposium about that time, as well, and suddenly, I had more appliqué choices!

3.What were your initial goals for your hybridizing? Clyde: To be honest my goals at first were very undefined. Just “prettier” daylilies. But with the happy “accident’ of what was to become our first intro., ‘Everyday Butterfly’, we crossed that flower to Stamile’s ‘Appliqué’, and Ted Petit’s ‘Bella Isabella’, and things really began to come into focus.

4.What are some of the challenges you have faced with your hybridizing? 

Clyde:  Just about the time we were hitting our stride, I retired from twenty years as a hospice chaplain, and began to travel to Peru. The timing was tough, and we missed a couple of seasons of hybridizing. THEN, we decided to move to our “camp”—the old homeplace on Horseshoe Lake in Monterey—and rent out the four acres. We couldn’t begin to move a fraction of our daylilies to the .6 acre tract—(including the house), so we made a whole lot of our friends into daylily gardeners overnight! Someday, Monterey will host its own tour of display gardens! At least, that is my vision.

5. How many seedlings do you grow each year? Clyde: From upwards of 1000 seedlings grown on the other place, the above move has resulted in a much smaller crop—maybe 500, or so, and a lot more culling!

6. What are some of your favorite daylily introductions from others? Clyde: I would have to say that recent giant appliqués, from Tet. RFK, interest me, in general, Pierce’s ‘Gigantor’, and ’No Words’, I would like to use, for instance, but his ‘Sparkling Giants’ has got to take the cake, from a hybridizer’s perspective! Heidi Douglas’ ‘Vanishing Act’ is another—that edge on a dip! I’d like to just “beam up” Dan Hansen’s garden and have it materialize in the pasture behind my house!

7. What are some of your favorite daylilies that you've hybridized? Clyde: My personal favorites of my own, are: tet. ‘Everyday Butterfly’ (13); tet. ‘Everyday Etching’ , and dip. Everyday Effie’ (15); and this year’s dip. ‘Everyday Blue Genes’ and tet. ‘Everyday Stenciled Perfection’ (17). My ACTUAL favorites are yet to bloom, or are seedlings yet to be developed!

8.What are some of your favorite daylily gardens to visit or that you visited? Clyde: Mark Carpenter’s Lily Farm—EVERY year, and on my wish list: Natural Selection Daylilies—Bob Faulkner, Ladybug Daylilies—Dan Hansen, Floyd Cove—The Pierces, Bill Maryott’s in CA, Lee Pickles’, Heavenly Gardens—Gossard, Polston’s, and of COURSE, Lewis Daylily Garden!

HERE ARE SOME OF CLYDE'S CURRENT INTRODUCTIONS:

                                 Everyday Butterfly (Clyde Grammon)

                        Everyday Stenciled Perfection (Clyde Grammon)

                               Everday Bouquet (Clyde Grammon)

                            Everyday Eyes of Gray (Clyde Grammon)

                           Everyday Effie (Clyde Grammon) Diploid

                        Everyday Blue Genes (Clyde Grammon) Diploid

                              Everyday Etching (Clyde Grammon)

Now here are some of Clyde's FUTURE INTROS:

                                       Clyde Grammon future intro

                                     Clyde Grammon future intro

                                    Clyde Grammon future intro

                      Clyde Grammon future intro out of Sp. Pattern Plus

Clyde Grammon future intro (Everyday Eyes of Gray X Sp. Modern Symmetry)

Clyde Grammon future intro to be called Everyday Elegance. 8" blooms.

Clyde Grammon tetraploid seedlings:

Everyday Eyes of Gray seedling with Sp. Art Deco and Everyday Stenciled Perfection.

Clyde Grammon diploid seedlings:

                           Clyde Grammon "The Green One" seedling.

                           Clyde Grammon Navajo Princess seedling.

Clyde wanted to add that he wanted to thank his close friends Mark Carpenter and Josh Jaques for their friendship over the past several years.  If it hadn't been for their encouragement, he might not have even registered his introduction, Everyday Butterfly. Thank you Mark and Josh!

I'd like to thank Clyde Grammon for his friendship as well, and taking the time to help me put this segment together.  Clyde has a Facebook page called Everyday Acres Daylilies-New Every Morning, where you can view his intros and seedlings.  You can contact him via the page as well.  One last note off the cuff, Clyde plays Santa Claus every year around xmas time.  I like it when we learn more about a person in each one of these segments, and I can tell you from my emails and Facebook messages that Clyde Grammon is a really nice person who I hope to meet him someday in my travels.  Thank God for Facebook and how it has connected me with so many of you daylily lovers and gardeners across the country.  Our next segment will feature applique daylilies from across the country and from hybridizers in other countries.  Stay tuned. Thanks CLYDE!