'A garden without daylilies is a day without sunshine!' Shropshire pair share flower power on TV

Fiona Pidduck and Liz Colebrook took over the running of New Hope Daylilies in Colebatch, near Bishop's Castle in 2022 from Mark Zenick and have been featured in the popular BBC programme Gardeners' World.

They explained that "a garden without daylilies is a day without sunshine" and spoke about how it has taken time to learn the names of the 327 varieties that they have at their horticultural business. There are many more varieties of the hardy plant around the world.

They are called daylilies because they only bloom for one day and gardens can be planned to bloom one at a time. They are tough, do not need to be caned, only need six hours of sunshine a day to grow and are the "ideal drought plant". They can bloom from May until October.

On the show, presented by Monty Don, the pair explain their favourite blooms and unusual names, including a tall variety called little b*****, which people have different reasons for buying.

"A day and a half of filming with BBC Gardeners' World crew last month condensed to seven minutes' edit on Friday night's show," they say.

"We are thrilled with the final cut... you even made it look like it hadn’t been raining!"

Previous owner Mark Zenick, the pair explain, had originally started growing hemerocallis (daylilies) in his native Massachusetts, USA more than 30 years ago and then subsequently introduced them to rural Shropshire in the noughties.

Over the last few years, Mark has shared his deep knowledge and huge passion for hemerocallis with Liz and Fiona and they now enthusiastically and joyfully continue to offer more than 300 daylily cultivars through the nursery for sale in person or online.

You can catch up on the Gardeners World programme (Episode 22, 2024) on BBC iPlayer.