Fun days at the daylily national convention

For July’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, I want to share my visit to the daylily national convention. A region of the American Daylily Society puts on the AHS National Convention each year. Region 15 put on this year’s convention, which was held in Asheville, North Carolina.

It was exciting because Bill and I had never been to the national convention before. Over 500 people attended. My daylily sickness rages on, and theirs does too.

If you find you love these flowers, I wrote a post about the care and feeding of daylilies a while back.

First, our hotel for the daylily national convention

We’ve been to Asheville many times, but my last trip was six years ago. We stayed in a lovely little hotel near downtown, which was perfect for our trip. We could hang out with everyone at the convention and then retreat to our room.

I can’t write enough nice things about the Princess Anne Hotel. The staff was so endearing, and our room was lovely. They had a happy hour each evening and breakfast each morning as part of their amenities. Even the bed and pillows were fabulous, which is important when you’re out of town. Normally, I would get a room at the convention hotel, which was also great, but I forgot to book it, and by the time I realized it, the convention hotel was already fully booked.

Sometimes, something that first seems like a hassle ends up being a good thing. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of the entire hotel, but they were hard to take. It has a lot of trees in front of it.

Daylily people are my favorite people

When Bill and I checked into the daylily national convention, I ran into several members of my local daylily club, and I was so glad to see them. Lots of hugs were exchanged, and we promised to see each other at the next meeting in September. It’s good to be with friends again, especially friends who love daylilies.

Tour gardens for the daylily national convention were special

There were four gardens on tour. As you may remember, I was on our regional tour in 2017, so I know how much work goes into a genus-specific tour. Every daylily must be identified by a tag which isn’t easy if you grow many of them. Also, you don’t want to have any misidentified.

Blue Ridge Daylilies

One of the tour gardens was Blue Ridge Dayliies in Alexandria, NC, a short bus ride from Asheville. I called it daylily heaven, and it is. We visited twice, and, yes, I bought some new daylilies. Central Oklahoma Daylily Society, my local club, is sponsoring the National Convention in 2024, and while I am not on tour, I think I will do an open garden during the convention. Tour gardens are pageant girls, but open gardens are not so much pressure.

Trillium Falls

We also visited Trillium Falls, an Asheville area private garden owned by Jim and Judi Efland. It was beautiful and kind of overwhelming because I kept thinking about how hard it would be to garden in such a steep place. Their home is on the side of a mountain. It was magical.

Sacred Circle Farm and Faer Hill

There were also two other gardens on tour, Sacred Circle Farm and Faer Hill Gardens. I didn’t get many photos of Faer Hill even thought it was lovely. It was just too crowded, but here is one.

Here’s the official meeting video if you want to see the gardens. The 2.08-minute mark is where they start.

Daylilies I loved

Also overwhelming was the number of daylilies at Blue Ridge. I’ve bought daylilies from Blue Ridge for years often through the Lily Auction. The gardens were immense, and boy was the weather hot and humid.

The first day we visited, I walked the official daylily display garden and part of the sale gardens on the other side. The display garden felt like it was a football field long, and I went up and down the rows with sweat pouring down my face. Did I mention it was that humid?

The daylilies were grown beautifully. They were in large clumps with many flowers because they were at peak bloom. I shared many of them on my Instagram stories while there. I should probably do a slideshow, but not sure I’ll find the time.

On the second day, we returned, and the weather was cloudy. It made our visit much more pleasant.

The daylilies are nearly finished in my own garden, and we’re moving into phlox season. I also came home and harvested a lot of tomatoes, but tomato season may be over with the high temperatures. Fruit won’t set in temperatures over 100°F.

It is so hot out there; I only go out in the mornings and water the daylilies I bought home and planted in pots–you can’t plant daylilies in the ground when it is this hot. I have the daylilies in shady spots on the north and east sides of the house. It’s supposed to be over 100°F every day this week.

Typing that makes me want to cry.

Instead, why don’t we hop over to this week’s episode of the Gardenangelists? Carol and I laugh a lot on there.

Have a good week and don’t forget to water. Mornings, soaker hoses, and drip irrigation are best but check all your lines. I’ve had a lot of split soaker hoses lately.