Breeder Profile - Darrel Apps
Breeder Profile
Darrel Apps got his desire for breeding daylilies when he worked for the University of Kentucky and saw how well the plants did in the hot summers of Lexington. He made his first cross in 1969, and has been breeding daylilies ever since (over 50 years!). Much of Dr. Apps’s work has been developing daylilies that thrive in Northern climates and now mid-Wisconsin (zone 4).
Dr. Darrel Apps Biography
Darrel Apps is a career horticulturist who holds three degrees all from the University of Wisconsin. He has worked as a State Specialist in Ornamental Horticulture at both the University of Kentucky and The Pennsylvania State University and as Departmental Head of Education at the world famous Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The last 13 years of his career were spent running his own specialty nursery, Woodside Gardens, in Bridgeton New Jersey. Apps sold his nursery in late 2007 and retired to his hometown area of Wild Rose, Wisconsin where he continues to breed daylilies.
Darrel has named and introduced 450 daylily cultivars and received the coveted Betrand Farr hybridizing award from the American Hemerocallis Society . Several of his daylilies have been patented and sold under trademark names by commercial nurseries over much of the United States and Eastern Canada. His daylilies Pardon Me and Happy Returns are grown in temperate climates worldwide.
