The maroon and orange Virginia Tech Spirit Daylily is now available at garden centers across the state.
The specialty daylily is the first new plant introduced by Virginia’s Beautiful Gardens program, which was founded in 2005 as a collaborative effort of Virginia Tech, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the Virginia Nursery Landscape Association. The program has test sites throughout the state for new plants in development.
The Virginia Tech Spirit Daylily was bred by Linda Pinkham, a Virginia Tech graduate and plant breeder who donated it to the program.
“The lily is in fairly high demand,” said Lisa Lipsey, program coordinator for Beautiful Gardens. “We originally introduced it as a mail order item, because the supply was limited. The demand for the daylily was far greater than the supply.”
The Virginia Tech Spirit is burnt orange with a maroon center and maroon edges. It requires full sun for at least six hours a day and likes moist conditions during the growing season. The daylily blooms in late May. “It reblooms throughout the year,” Lipsey said.
The Beautiful Gardens program plans to introduce more new plant varieties in the future. “There are more daylilies in the pipeline,” Lipsey said.
A list of retailers that have the Virginia Tech Spirit Daylily is available atwww.beautifulgardens.org.
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