The 2010 I got was also DESERT SHORE. I just don't have room to keep them all! Have decided to keep KONA COAST and donate the other two gifts to our Regional auction along with another couple of bonus plants that have arrived over the past few days. It would be nice to have more room, but I really am trying to get the number of registered cultivars down to 700 by the time this garden is on Regional tour in 2012. About two years ago, the numbers were at 1000 and now it's down to about 770. After digging the last six orders to ship out this spring, I'm hoping to be down to 750! Of course I brought home three new club plants yesterday - wish I'd stop shooting myself in the foot!

I checked on Fabulous Frieda on the AHS site and was surprised that it looks a lot like Christmas Celebration that I already have. There is a difference, but similar. I love reds so I just had to see it. I was needing to add to my 5,000 page want list.I will add this one but not at the top. Thanks for the information on a new red, I'm also on the look for more new reds so keep the info coming!!! This is a GREAT thread!!! Blessing, Mona

Ack! Someone thinks I'm an expert! No no NO LOLOL. I consider myself a newish newbie still, and I am a TOTAL sucker for a pretty face! Seriously though, thank you for the very kind words, but I really don't consider myself to be all that knowledgeable yet. But what I do is get lots of catalogs and spend WAY TOO MUCH time looking at hybridizers' and sellers' web sites....I belong to several lists....I enjoy visiting gardens, love being able to see tour gardens during conventions, regional meetings, etc.....I've gone to the same AHS display garden several million times at this point, and I always see something new or learn something new about the plants, or I see old, familiar faces in a new light....I've taken a garden judges and exhibition judges clinic....I belong to AHS and to two local clubs, and I entered my very first daylily show this summer (what a blast that was!)....I have catalogs, price lists and newsletters from the latest going back years....I have a near-complete set of AHS journals....I have TONS AND TONS of images saved, with text files of the posters' accompanying comments on the daylilies, on daylily culture and etc etc etc....the hybridizers with whom I'm not at least semi-familiar? Probably just a handful of local ones here or there throughout the country. IOW, there are SO MANY ways for everyone to learn and pick up useful info. So you can pick and choose what seems right for you at the time. (IMO everyone should at least consider joining AHS and at least one local club....I think the cost is trivial relative to what you can conceivably get out of it.) But despite all that, IMHO the REAL experts and knowledgeable people here are floota, shive, and others like them, who are long-time daylily growers who have or have had substantial daylily collections (compared to my really rather smallish one) and who know so much more than I do.... still, I do feel pleased that you enjoy some of my comments. :)))

Completely out of space so no newbies for me this year----previous ones are establishing nicely, although I think I may have lost some of the (luckily cheaper) ones that I tried in the ground due to our unusually cold winter. Mainly I grow in very large pots as the ground where I live is VERY poor---dry and stony and only a few inches deep on top of a stone shelf so only especially hardy ones go in the ground for lanscaping alongside hardy geraniums. I have LAKE EFFECT, the first year I was not impressed at all, I thought the colour was FOUL, but last year it was really nice and is coping well with British weather (much better than I am) so it is one worth keeping for a few year even if you don't like it initially.