Big Chicken Daylily Farm

For Father's Day we decided to take a little road trip our to East Texas and visit Big Chicken Daylily farm.  We had wanted to visit in the past, but they have been closed to the public for the past few years due to some health issues.  This year they were able to re-open.

Big Chicken is located in Brownsboro, TX and has about 800 cultivars of daylilies available.  Their plants are not layed out in rows, but instead are displayed as part of a cottage style garden, mixed with other perennials and annuals.

They had all different styles, including this nice 'Kwanso' above.  The owners favorites are doubles, but due to some bad winter weather, they had lost the majority of their collection.  They didn't have a lot of Unusual Forms or Spiders, but we still found plants we wanted.  The owner summed it up by saying "There are over 85,000 cultivars of daylilies.  There is something for everyone."

You can wander all over the garden looking and making notes of what plants you want.  It's seems to be the way daylilies are often sold...dug right out of the field while you watch.  You can see the "True Plant Geek" (in the blue shirt) speaking with one of the owners.

It's so fun to talk with folks who love gardening and daylilies as much as we do. So often "regular people" just don't get it.  Its so hard to explain why you need that plant when you already have so many at home.  Other gardeners just get it.

They kept apologizing that they didn't have lots of the brand new cultivars that have recently been released and instead had lots of older favorites.  We had to continue to explain that we liked what we liked and didn't worry about what year it was hybridized.  If we only wanted the newest, we could stay home and shop on the internet.  Instead we got to spend a few hours with some delightful people outside in the garden.  Totally a win.

This was probably the one I was most excited about, 'Itsy Bitsy Spider'.  Its an Unusual Form Crispate with a 3.5 inch flower.  Over the last year I've gotten interested in miniature daylilies and wanting to create unusual forms in that size.  Currently, there are a few, but most are above the 3 inch cut off for flower size.  I had read about 'Itsy Bisty Spider' early in the month, saw that is has a lot of child plants, and thought about how I should get some.  Low and behold, Big Chicken had it, and now I do too.

We had originally planned on heading back home after this stop, getting lunch on the way, but since everyone was still feeling good, we decided to add a blueberry farm and another daylily garden onto the trip.  I'll share those in another post.