About us and our Daylilies
Strictly Daylilies is owned and run by Paula and Chris Dyason in the village of Histon, just north of Cambridge in the UK.
Paula is American; spending most of her early years in California, but after her parents moved east to South Carolina she followed. Her mother was an enthusiastic collector with over 200 varieties at their 30-acre homestead, buying new releases every year and passing on her passion to her daughter.
Paula became a dentist, practicing in South Carolina, but was an avid gardener in her spare time and studied horticulture to achieve the Master Gardener qualification. Not surprisingly, her garden included a lot of daylilies!
When Paula married Chris, a Brit, in 2008, she left dentistry and moved to England where she wanted to cultivate a typical English country garden but to populate it with daylilies.
The garden collection rapidly expanded with daylily plants coming from many sources and it wasn’t long before the opportunity to turn a hobby into a business became obvious. In 2012 a large collection of daylilies was purchased and Strictly Daylilies Ltd was born.
Staying true to ‘doing what it says on the can’, Strictly sells only daylilies and will not be reducing its focus by adding other species. The phrase 'Specialist' is used with abandon nowadays but Strictly is just that. We don't just claim to be specialists in hemerocallis, we are.
Since then Paula has roped in Chris to help in the daylily business and the number of plants in stock has risen to over 25,000 with approximately 2000 different varieties. The nursery now has 5 acres of land and the business has become one of the largest growers of daylilies in the UK. Meanwhile Paula has begun significant breeding programs producing 7,000 to 10,000 seedlings each year. Her hybridising is focused on clear bright colours and small bloom unusual forms with excellent plant habits suited for the UK climate.
Paula is the International Chair of the American Hemerocallis Society and has qualified as an American Hemerocallis Society Garden Judge, the only one outside North America. She is a regular attendee at AHS Conventions in the US. She is also one of the members of the Royal Horticultural Society Forum for evaluating hemerocallis for AGMs in the UK.
The typical English country garden that Paula wanted to create is an accredited AHS Display Garden, the only one in the UK and one of only four in ‘the rest of the World’. She has also just completed an official American Hemerocallis Historic Display Garden and has a British National Collection of modern daylilies through Plant Heritage.
Above all, Paula’s business is focused on providing a high quality service backed by a no-quibble guarantee of success. Paula is one of those people who can only do 100%; phrases like “that’ll do” are not in her vocabulary. She’s on a mission to convince the World that daylilies should be in every garden.
Strictly Daylilies is based just north of Cambridge and sells hemerocallis on a mail order basis to mainland UK. Although not a garden centre open to the public, they do open the gates to all during 'Open Garden Days' in July which is usually peak bloom season. Check our news blog yearly for exact dates.
