Hundreds of plants — & counting!
400 day lilies about to burst on former farmland

By Chris Young
MethuenLife Writer

Recently, while touring her garden with MethuenLife, Linda Yuele reached across a collection of handsome orange Asiatic lilies, picked off a small red bug – the dreaded lily leaf beetle – and squashed it between her thumb and forefinger.
“That’s how I deal with these pests. I don’t like to spray,” said this experienced gardener and, for the past three years, president of the Methuen Garden Club. Just this month, Linda passed over the president’s reins to Teri Karamourtopoulos.
Linda and her husband, Dennis, are hard-working gardeners of a 1-acre wooded lot on Nevins Street, two blocks from the Historic District, land that originally was part of the Nevins Farm.
In the past eight to 10 years, the invasive bright scarlet lily leaf beetle has destroyed most New England lily beds and discouraged gardeners from growing true lilies.
Many, like Linda, have switched to growing day lilies (hemerocallis) in a big way, although she keeps this small patch of true lilies alive by constant vigilance. The beetles don’t eat day lilies.
The Yueles have converted a 250-foot bank in front of their 1920s house into a show-stopping event in mid-July through the summer. At last count, they have planted about 250 different varieties of day lilies, but somehow you know they haven’t stopped there. Already, many of the originals have reproduced so that now, the shady bank in front of a gracious stone wall is covered in a riot of color from the approximately 400 day lilies. They bloom from July through most of the summer.
Linda systematically labels each new bulb, so that she knows what she has.
“I learned to do that from Dick Wilson, who has even more day lilies than I,” Linda said. Dick, an avid gardener and day lily collector, is also a member of the garden club.
Linda joined the American Hemerocallis Society and said she has learned a lot from their local, regional and national publications. She often shops at a day lily farm in Hudson, N.H., which has over 1,200 varieties for sale.
Denis loves the lilies too.
“I don’t have to mow this bank any more and it was hard to get grass to grow, with all the shade. Plus, the lilies are beautiful and they tolerate the shade,” he said.
The Yueles have lived at No. 38 for 14 1/2 years, since 1995.
“I had been renting in the historic section, two blocks away, when this house went up for sale and I knew I just had to buy it because I had always admired the property when out walking my dog. I loved the big rhodies and stone walls,” Linda resminisced.
But the towering pines and stately oaks and even the giant rhododendrons that add beauty and interest to the many-leveled garden offer a challenge to anything but a shade garden, which is why Linda frequently moves entire flower beds in the search of the right balance of sun and shade.
Like all true gardeners, the Yueles are not afraid to move things.
Sun-filled spots are at a premium, but they still grow the plants they want, by the hundreds, including vegetables; they just got clever about moving them if necessary.
They grow everything from vegetables to day lilies and Linda experiments with new plants, many of which she receives from other garden club members at their spring and summer meetings.
This year, Dennis is happy to have more sun on his vegetable garden behind the house, thanks to the December ice storm which toppled a huge pine and also brought down a tulip tree. Nearer the house, his small herb garden was given one of the sunniest spots on the property. Because of the wet and cold spring, biennials like dill are still small in late June.
The property is a handsome mixture of rocky hills, wooded areas and vernal pools, which hold endangered salamanders, according to the Methuen Conservation Department.
The garden has raspberries from Linda’s grandmother’s farm on Long Island, N.Y.; a trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) on a lattice trellis. The vine has yet to bloom after five patient years, but is fully leafed and a great place for a bird’s nest. A mother robin flew out from the vine, squawking complaints as we approached. Another trellis holds four varieties of clematis which bloom in stages, so that one is blooming all summer. Purple ground phlox had finished its spring bloom on a stone wall.
One flower bed holds interesting perennials such as the green wizard coneflower (Rudbeckia echinacea), which has a black center ringed with gold and surrounded by green petals; butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), a type of native milkweed; jupiter’s beard (Centrathus ruber) also known as red valerian, one of the longest blooming perennials in the garden.
The former strawberry garden now holds Linda’s growing collection of miniature hostas, a work in progress.
There are a few rose bushes, including the popular Knock Out rose. Roses are problematic here because of the lack of sun.
Despite, or maybe because of, the variety and the sheer numbers of plants, Linda said she is trying to reduce the workload without sacrificing beauty.
“I plan to yank out plants that need a lot of care. I don’t want to be weeding every day,” she said.