Region 13

 

 

Edith Sholar
Mrs. Alvin Sholar

Baton Rouge Hybridizers - The Early Years

1950-1975

By Clarence and Beth Crochet

It was 1959 when we arrived in Prairieville just in time to become acquainted with the hybridizers and growers in the area.

By far the best known hybridizer was the late Edith Sholar who, along with her husband Alvin, owned and operated a large garden-nursery on Essen Lane in Baton Rouge. The Scholar garden was a thriving enterprise with Marie Monroe (wife of our long time daylily registrar Bill Monroe) taking care of the business part of the operation. Edith did all the hybridizing while Alvin did all of the daylily bed preparation.

We had been told several times by Edith that she thought the best soil amendments to be old sawdust plus Canadian peat moss. These she used yearly in her beds with excellent results. The Sholar business featured its large plantings of daylilies, camellias, sasanquas planted among very tall pine trees. This garden became well known because of its steady output of fine registrations. Edith also published a yearly price list and it was available to anyone for the asking. This was a first for the area. Edith enjoyed a wide circle of friends from throughout the United States and attended many daylily functions –local, regional and national. She was an energetic and highly sociable person, a “live wire” daylily enthusiast who played an important role in introducing daylilies to the area and to a number of people, especially those in the Baton Rouge area.  She almost single handedly (with the help of Bill Monroe and a few others) formed the Baton Rouge Daylily Society.

Edith Sholar confided that she offered plants for sale in order to pay for old sawdust and peat moss! She would buy the current registrations from a number of the well-known hybridizers – Wild, Sass, Pittard, MacMillan, Guidry, Monette, Edna and later Elsie Spalding, using them to produce quite a long list of distinctive daylilies for their time. Her standards for selection were high and because of certain faults, many seedlings were deemed unworthy to be considered for registration. These she gave to friends and acquaintances for landscape purposes. We recall that Mrs. U. B. Evans from Ferriday, Louisiana would load up a pick-up truck full of seedlings to take back home for her central Louisiana landscape.

We would visit the Sholar garden quite often. The place was usually a beehive of activity with friends visiting from far and wide on a regular basis during bloom season. Sholar hospitality had no bounds and Edith would board and entertain her many visitors well, and even drive them around town to visit other daylily gardens.

Some of the best known of the Sholar 77 registrations were Hemerocallis  ‘Squaw Valley’ (E. Sholar 1968) which, for its time was one of the very best and first ‘near white’ daylilies. This one had short scapes and large blooms with wide segments. The Sholar introduction of H. ‘Lime Frolic’ coincided with the date of the American Hemerocallis Society National Convention in Baton Rouge.  H. ‘Lime Frolic’ was a fine yellow-green, with very wide segments. This one became popular because of its beautiful colors – cream and green.   H. ‘Big Mamou’ (1962) was a brown-rose blended novelty on short scapes which Edith introduced after being urged to do so by friends. The large ungainly blooms made a hit with the growers because of their informal look.

Another notable introduction was H. ‘Louise Denham’ (1966), a rather narrow petaled beautifully colored pink with darker pink edges around its petals. Edith considered this introduction to be a giant step forward in the development of edged cultivars. She kept a large framed picture of her accomplishment hanging on the wall in the living room!

It was in the early 1970’s that the Sholars realized that they could no longer properly maintain their large garden. Their extensive Essen Lane property was sold and they moved to another part of town, still keeping a good collection of new cultivars in their new small garden.

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(Accompanying photos taken by the author, Clarence Crochet. Photo of Mrs. Sholar seated was taken when she was in her nineties.

Originally printed in The Arkla Daylily, Winter 2007 issue.