For years, one of the highpoints of my gardening year was the annual arrival of the lush print catalog from Klehm’s Song Sparrow Nursery in Avalon, Wisconsin. The book was plump, rife with beautiful illustrations and featured a stunning array of gorgeous, romantic plants, especially peonies, daylilies, hostas, lilacs and flowering crabapples. Paging through the Song Sparrow catalog for the first time each year produced intense drooling, not to mention the wish for an extra million or two dollars to facilitate ordering at least one of everything on offer.
Klehm’s was a third generation family business, founded in Illinois. It later moved to Wisconsin, which is when the poetic “Song Sparrow” name kicked in. Roy Klehm, the proprietor, was not just a nurseryman, but a plant connoisseur and hybridizer. He was fabled for his peony introductions, which were part of Song Sparrow’s line-up, but he also carried plants hybridized by other celebrated breeders. One of them, Brother Charles Reckamp, a brother of the Society of the Divine Word, who hybridized daylilies with extravagantly ruffled petals in colors that appeared dusted by diamonds. The Reckamp varieties frequently bore heavenly names, like the peachy, ruffled ‘Angel’s Smile’.
Father John Fiala, 1924-1990, of John Carroll University, was another cleric/plantsman whose lilac and crabapple introductions were offered by Song Sparrow. Fiala lilacs are sumptuous, especially varieties like ‘Avalanche’, a double-flowered white cultivar of Syringa vulgaris or common lilac, with exquisite fragrance. Another Fiala variety that I have coveted for years is ‘Wedgewood Blue’, as true blue as its name, with a singularly delicious fragrance.
The annual Song Sparrow parade of fabulous plants came to an end when Roy Klehm retired in 2019. His employees and a neighboring farmer tried to keep the nursery afloat for awhile, but ultimately the absence of its guiding spirit and the appearance of COVID was the death knell for Song Sparrow. Its many devoted customers have felt bereft ever since.
Now, some of us have gotten a slight reprieve because a couple of Song Sparrow’s plant collections have been purchased by other nurseries—both of them in Missouri–and are returning to the market. The daylilies are now in the hands of the century-old Gilbert H. Wild and Son, of Reeds, Missouri, and the peonies are being sold by Hollingsworth Peonies, another Missouri company located in Skidmore, Missouri.
Of course growing and propagating the Song Sparrow daylily and peony collections take time, but the Wild firm offered the first seven varieties in the fall of 2022, including the ruffly peachy-pink ‘Pearled Dove’. I am sure that more are in the offing as stock is enlarged. The larger Wild daylily collection also includes lots of other lovely plants.
Hollingsworth Peonies is not as old as the Wild firm, but is devoted to beautiful peonies, including the traditional lactiflora or garden peony varieties, as well tree peonies and intersectional types, which are modern hybrids of tree and garden peonies. Donald Hollingsworth, the founder of Hollingsworth peonies, is also a breeder, and he continues to be active in the field in his nineties. Among the Roy Klehm hybrids offered by Hollingworth are the sumptuous pink ‘Angel Cheeks’, and the equally bodacious ‘Bowl of Cream’, a white-flowered variety; not to mention the wild and crazy ‘Moon Fritters’ with twisted white petals accented by red pistils and vivid golden stamens.
What distinguished Song Sparrow was Roy Klehm’s artistic sensibility. The great daylily breeder Pauline Henry—some of whose daylilies were also carried by Song Sparrow—once said that she bred “pretty on pretty”, meaning that she prized beautiful, elegant form and color above all else in her breeding efforts. I have the sense that Roy Klehm look for “pretty on pretty”—or possibly “elegant on elegant”–as well.
At a time when there seems to be a lot more anger and a lot less beauty in the world, we could all use a dose of that spirit.
You can plant daylilies now and the Wild collection is available at Gilbert H.Wild & Son, 2944 State Hwy 37, Reeds, MO 64859; (888)- 449-4537; www.gilbertwild.com. Peonies are best planted in the fall, but you can feast your eyes and make your order list now by going to Hollingsworth Peony Farm, 18411 220th Street, Skidmore, Missouri 64487; (660) 851-1560; www.hollingsworthpeonies.com.
The Song Sparrow story has a moral…When you find a good nursery, close to home or farther afield, patronize it regularly and snap up the plants that are specialties of that company. Nothing—except possibly groundhogs—lasts forever.