Growing Nature’s Fireworks
All he wanted were a few bright daylilies, the kind that loll like weeds on picket fences along the East Coast. But nine years ago, when landscape designer John Schoustra sought them out for clients, he hit a wall. Local nurseries scarcely grew them. Eastern catalogs offered varieties that withered in the heat, died in the cold and didn’t bloom enough for Western tastes. Solution? He bought a nursery and cultivated his own.
Today, his 25-acre Greenwood Daylily Gardens in Riverside (the office is in Long Beach) is the largest daylily grower west of the Rockies, featuring 2,000 cultivars. It’s no slouch with irises either, growing 1,000 selections. And Schoustra is developing more all the time. Shorter, taller, tougher--whatever its qualities, every plant must thrive in our climate. Some of his daylilies flower almost 10 months a year; his repeat-blooming irises, three or four times a year. “They’re nature’s fireworks,” he says. “We like them because they’re pretty, yes, but also because they’re bulletproof.”
Trained in landscape architecture at UC Berkeley, Schoustra, 39, has always been intrigued by California’s climate and traditions. Rather than introducing new flounces in his flowers--which might produce weak performers--he often looks to the past, reviving long-lost varieties. Of course, propagating takes time--10 years to grow enough plants to sell in any numbers. But Schoustra, who is also garden superintendent for the historic Rancho Los Alamitos gardens in Long Beach, has learned to cultivate patience. “I get satisfaction,” he says, “from the idea of leaving something better behind.”
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John Schoustra’s SoCal Favorites: Daylilies: ‘Bitsy’ blooms clear yellow 290 days a year and grows 2 feet tall; ‘Chartwell’ produces large velvety purple, 3-foot-tall flowers 200 days. Irises: ‘Immortality,’ a 30-inch-tall reblooming bearded variety, bears fragrant white flowers; “Grandma’s Purple Flag,” an old selection, has small, 20-inch-tall dark-purple blooms four or five times annually.
