Meeting Activities: Speaker, Master Gardeners (available for questions)

Speaker: Paul Gellatly

Topic: One Hundred Years of a Flower that Lasts a Day

The Etobicoke Horticultural Society is 100 years old. In 1925, there were 14 new daylily registrations, bringing the total number of registrations to 94. Today, there are over 100,000 registered daylilies, 110 of which have been registered by Paul Gellatly.

In this talk, Paul will walk us through the last 100 years, he will introduce some of the award winning daylilies, and the hybridizers that created them. We’ll get a glimpse into the past, the present and the future of a flower that’s been gracing gardens for over 100 years, one day at a time.

Our Speaker Bio:

A passionate life-long horticulturist, Paul Gellatly is currently the CEO of ‘The Tattooed Gardener Inc.   He was featured on season 1 of the television documentary series ‘Visionary Gardeners’.   He is an avid collector of rare and unusual plants with a personal collection of over 800 tropical plants. He is also an experienced hybridizer of daylilies, with 107 registrations with the American Hemerocallis Society. Winner of the Douglas Lycett Award for top Daylily seedling in 2022, now registered as ‘Oscar Peterson’.

Paul has affiliations with the Toronto Botanical Garden as the former Director of Horticulture and The Toronto Zoo as former Curatorial Gardener managing one of Canada’s largest tropical plant collections. 

Many online garden lovers may know Paul through his strong online presence as The Tattooed Gardener, with social media posts reaching 30-35 million people per month.