Nancy Stern
Member, New England Daylily Society
My name is Nancy Stern and I have been a member of the New England Daylily Society since 2007. I’ve always been a gardener, but my interest in daylilies grew when my son started collecting and hybridizing daylilies. Since then, our garden has evolved to include more than 700 cultivars.
About the Society
The American Daylily Society (ADS) was founded in 1946 and currently has over 5,000 members. The New England Daylily Society (NEDS) is a local club of the ADS. We are a group of daylily enthusiasts who meet to share our experience and knowledge, and to educate the public about daylilies. Our meetings include local and national guest speakers, an annual photography contest, and public and member daylily sales. We also have the opportunity to attend national conventions, regional meetings, and garden tours. Any member of the ADS who lives in New England is eligible to become a NEDS member. For more information visit our website www.nedaylily.org.
About the Plant
Daylilies are easy to grow, drought tolerant, and relatively pest-free. There are so many beautiful cultivars in all sizes, shapes and colors that it would be hard not to find one you love. It is best to buy locally grown plants to be sure they are hardy in your area. They should be planted where they will get at least six hours of full sun, and with the right combination of early, midseason, and late-blooming plants, you can have flowers in bloom all summer long. Daylilies will increase in size until you have a well-established clump, which you can then divide and share with friends and family!
About the Show
The NEDS annual daylily exhibition at New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill is an opportunity for us to display just a few of the extraordinary blooms of the more than 80,000 registered varieties of daylilies. Mid-July is peak season for daylily bloom in our area and therefore the best time to showcase the variety of sizes, colors, patterns, and forms of Hemerocallis, the scientific name for daylily. Up until the morning of the show, our members don’t know which flowers they will be bringing since each bloom lasts for only one day, and you can never be sure which flowers will be open and in perfect condition. Exhibitors will be up at the crack of dawn searching their garden for winning entries. Then it’s a race to cut scapes, carefully load them into the car, and get them to New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill without damage. ADS certified judges evaluate each entry, checking for color, substance, form, and size. Winning entries earn a purple, blue, red, or yellow ribbon for qualifying scores, and the Best in Show is chosen from the winning flowers in each of the individual categories. While the judging is taking place, the society offers an educational lecture and demonstration in the auditorium, and local growers have daylilies for sale outside the exhibition.
For more information, see the American Daylily Society (ADS) website at www.daylilies.org