Mabel Matthews

Mabel Matthews was a local daylily hybridizer and a founding member of the North Texas Daylily Society.  She was born in 1917 in North Carolina, and after getting married and living in a variety of locations due to her husband's military career, she ended up in the Fort Worth area.

'Hurst Annabelle Lee'

"Hurst Gypsy Trail'

After relocating to Fort Worth alone, she worked at General Dynamics (now Lockheed) in the legal department and even after her husband arrived, she continued her career at General Dynamics and eventually went onto work with three oil executives for another 15 years. During this time, Mabel attended Texas Wesleyan University and majored in business. This led her to a 45-year career as a real estate broker. As a part of this career, she purchased many rental homes and an apartment complex as fixer-uppers, and maintained them for many years. In the early 1950's, they purchased a home in my neighborhood.

'Hurst Honey Bee'

'Lady Lillie'

She developed an interest in daylilies through visits to the garden of a local grower of daylilies and irises.  After acquiring a collection of daylilies of her own, she eventually started hybridizing.  In 1987, she registered her first daylily, Hemerocallis 'Lady Callie', named for a friend.  She went on to register 63 cultivars in total.  Her home was also an AHS display garden.

'Lady Callie'

Shortly after we moved to our house we learned about Mabel and her work in daylilies.  She passed away Sunday, June 6, 2010 at the age of 92.  Her daylily collection went to another member of the North Texas Daylily Society in Parker County, Texas.

'Hurst Frosty Sorbet'

'Hurst Seminole Treasure'

We thought it would be fun to have our own Mabel Matthews daylily collection, so we asked the folks who inherited her collection at the next daylily meeting and made a date to come out to their place to pick up a few fans of each.  Little did we know that they were wanting the garden space and we came home with the entire collection.

'Hurst Dreamy Wow'

'Hurst Country Girl'

Many of her cultivars didn't make it into the collection.  Apparently the operation to save them, was quick and the labeling in the garden kind of sloppy.  Probably due to her age and not being able to tend the garden as much.  Of the originally 63, we only have 15-20.  Some of them aren't necessarily labeled correctly.  We also got a box of some of her daylily papers, flower show ribbons, and a lot of pictures.  These have been really helpful in matching photos to flower, since the majority of her registrations do not include a photo in the AHS database.

'Hurst Peach Glow'

'Hurst Rose Treasure'

Over the next few years we plan on talking to other club members to see if we can amass more of her collection.  It would be great if we could find all of them, plus the daylily named for Mabel, 'Mabel Matthews'.  We really like having our own little piece of horticulture history in our front yard.

'Mabel Mathews'
This daylily is not a Mathews cultivar, but instead named for Mable by her friend the hybridizer.