OPEN GARDEN TIME!!!

Yeah baby, its that time again. Time for the 7th Annul Daylily Open Garden! It is our delight to open our garden to visitor from where ever they come. We started it years ago to show folks that modern daylilies are more than just the little yellow "stella d'oro" that you see in commercial landscaping just about everywhere or the orange "ditch lily" you see growing on the roadsides. Yes, the modern daylliy has come a long way; they have so much to offer a garden. They are called America's favorite perennial for a reason.

For the past three years, we have been selling our "surplus" and donating the proceeds to the Volunteers in Mission "Taiama" farm project that I have been so blessed to be a part of. Just a week ago, more than 200 trees and 140 pineapple plants were delivered and planted at the farm. It is our hope that the trees will make a significant impact on the nutrition and economy of this little village in one of the worlds poorest countries.


So, if you want to make a difference; if you want to make an impact, or if you want to just stroll the paths of our garden and gawk at the colors, sizes, and shapes of hundreds of daylilies and perennials, come on out. Email me for directions.

Bloggers note: all of the grass you see in picture above is now taken up by MORE GARDEN SPACE!!!

Treasures

Treasures are anywhere and everywhere; you just have to know how to look for them. A couple of years ago we opened up the seedling field from our daylily hybridizing to friends who, by making a donation to our Farm Mission in Sierra Leone, West Africa, could chose a daylily seedling and give it a name. We would take care of the official registration through the American Hemerocallis Society, they just had to come up with the name. One of those seedlings is shown on the blogpage here. H. 'Taiama' is named after the village where we go to do Medical, nutritional, agricultural, and other types of mission work. Many people chose to honor or memorialize loved ones. My best friend Rob, a long time supporter of the mission, asked me to chose one for his wife, and our friend, and name it after her, Ashlee Nicole, as a birthday present. Now, I must say it isn't easy to make that kind of choice... you never know what colors someone likes or whether a flower will appeal to them or not. But one day, Alison and I were looking at our seedling bed and this one spoke up and said "I'm Ashlee Nicole, happy to meet you." We think it is a real treasure, just like Ashlee.