It was one of those sultry July days when the world seems to press down on you. The daily struggle with the desktop was much harder than usual and I fought to stay awake. I was just considering ‘abandoning laptop’ when the phone rang and a gardening friend made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Less than an hour later I was immersed in the world of hemerocallis in a Cirencester NGS garden full of them at 25 Bowling Green Road. Four hundred different daylilies scented the air in a rainbow of colours and meadow brown and skipper butterflies danced above them.

This amazing collection has been put together by John and Susan Beck. There are several official openings in late June and July and it’s still possible to visit (by appointment) until the end of July. It’s my sort of garden, one with very little lawn, narrow paths and thousands of plants including walls of clematis and roses. It isn’t a dry plant collection. Despite every variety being named, it functions as a garden space.

There is a hosta and hemerocallis for real enthusiasts. I once enraged a section of them when I wrote about the differences between brash American varieties and the gentler, more old-fashioned ones. The touchpaper was my editor’s headline “Over-grown, Over-bright and Over-here”. I got letters, lots of them, because there was already a rift. The late Graham Stuart Thomas had written “present-day hybridising and selection are ruining this noble genus” in one of his last books, Treasured Perennials (1999). Vice-president of the Hosta and Hemerocallis Society from 1983 until 2003, Thomas felt very strongly that modern hemerocallis breeding was creating something monstrous. He even walked out of one meeting.

Gerald Sinclair, of The Nursery Further Afield, near Brackley, (see right) has a Plant Heritage collection of older British varieties bred by Banbury resident Brummit, Coe and Randall. He also trials new daylilies and hundreds can be seen and some bought at this excellent nursery. They are at their best now. Some of these older varieties are very graceful, and the yellows and creams seem to be more scented. I grow two or three in semi-shade and they flower well. Given moisture-retentive soil and a warm position, many hemerocallis flower until late summer. Like irises, they do not like to be crowded out by other plants, so give them some space.

Less than a mile away from Gerald Sinclair, Valerie Bexley and Richard Bashford garden at Woodchippings, Juniper Hill. Their garden is in The Good Gardens Guide and they mix their hemerocallis with old-fashioned roses and soft golden grasses.

Others mingle pastel hemerocallis with low-growing hardy geraniums such as G. x riversleaianum ‘Mavis Simpson’ and ‘Russell Prichard’, and varieties of Geranium x oxonianum.

Hemerocallis are easy to breed because the style and stigma are wide apart. Each flower lasts just a day so this makes them very easy to cross-pollinate. Once the seed is set, there’s a real variation in seedlings and this includes flower structure and colour. Some are trumpet-shaped, others have long spidery petals whilst others have thickly textured frilly petals.

Combine this with the fact that you can raise a flowering plant from seed within two years and it is easy to get hooked. Personally I’m wedded to the vibrant reds, oranges and warm-browns.