{"id":3988,"date":"2023-05-30T05:56:17","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T13:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3988"},"modified":"2023-05-30T05:56:17","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T13:56:17","slug":"song-sparrow-diaspora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/song-sparrow-diaspora\/","title":{"rendered":"Song Sparrow Diaspora"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For years, one of the highpoints of my gardening year was the annual arrival of the lush print catalog from Klehm\u2019s 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.
\n\tKlehm\u2019s was a third generation family business, founded in Illinois. It later moved to Wisconsin, which is when the poetic \u201cSong Sparrow\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u2018Angel\u2019s Smile\u2019.
\n\tFather 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 \u2018Avalanche\u2019, a double-flowered white cultivar of Syringa vulgaris or common lilac, with exquisite fragrance. Another Fiala variety that I have coveted for years is \u2018Wedgewood Blue\u2019, as true blue as its name, with a singularly delicious fragrance.
\n\tThe 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.
\n\tNow, some of us have gotten a slight reprieve because a couple of Song Sparrow\u2019s plant collections have been purchased by other nurseries\u2014both 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.
\n\tOf 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 \u2018Pearled Dove\u2019. 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.
\n\tHollingsworth 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 \u2018Angel Cheeks\u2019, and the equally bodacious \u2018Bowl of Cream\u2019, a white-flowered variety; not to mention the wild and crazy \u2018Moon Fritters\u2019 with twisted white petals accented by red pistils and vivid golden stamens.
\n\tWhat distinguished Song Sparrow was Roy Klehm\u2019s artistic sensibility. The great daylily breeder Pauline Henry\u2014some of whose daylilies were also carried by Song Sparrow\u2014once said that she bred \u201cpretty on pretty\u201d, 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 \u201cpretty on pretty\u201d\u2014or possibly \u201celegant on elegant\u201d–as well.
\n\tAt 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.
\n\tYou 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.
\n\tThe Song Sparrow story has a moral\u2026When 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\u2014except possibly groundhogs\u2014lasts forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, one of the highpoints of my gardening year was the annual arrival of the lush print catalog from Klehm\u2019s 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,1],"tags":[2877,189,2878,2090,302,2876,2880,2875,2879,446],"class_list":["post-3988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-uncategorized","tag-lilac-collections","tag-lilacs","tag-online-nurseries","tag-paeonia","tag-peonies","tag-peony-collections","tag-song-sparrow-collections","tag-song-sparrow-nursery","tag-song-sparrow-plants","tag-syringa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3990,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions\/3990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}