“Little by little, day by day, friends and flowers grow that way.”

OUR STORY

How did two people get so enthused over & involved in growing daylilies.  We think, it was in our blood.  Kathy’s mother always loved growing flowers & having a beautiful yard.  Both of their parents shared growing daylilies and traveled the “daylily trail”, so to speak.  They, like many of us, bought daylilies over a period of time.  At one time Kathy’s parents belonged to the Dublin Daylily Club in Dublin Ga.  Over time they acquired many daylilies from the Joiners of Savannah Ga, Canoochee Daylily Garden in Canoochee Ga, a lovely lady known as “Miss Peacock” of Twin City Ga anad many other places they would travel to.  On the other hand, Bruce mother & grandmother also had the love of daylilies.  Their daylilies came from many places, including Charles & Francis Busby.  Soon two worlds, miles apart, became acquainted, fell in love & later became one.  When their lives joined, so did many beautiful flowers from all over.  Kathy was retired before Bruce, so she began bringing her flowers to their new home and extended their lovely garden.  She would travel to buy more daylilies.  Some came from the late Mr. Lane, Tim Bell of Bells Daylily Garden, Floyd Coves, The Trimmer’s, Pete Harry Daylilies & numerous other hybridizers.  She was hooked, both line & sinker!  She couldn’t get enough, the beds began to grow.  When Bruce started to cut back at the greenhouses, his interest began to grow as well.  Yes, even Bruce couldn’t get enough of the dazzling Daylily.  Hybridizing wasn’t enough for him.  With his background in farming, growing transplants in the greenhouses, and his UGA degree in Agriculture his interest in what could be, was set on fire.  Their gardens grew even more.  He was not satisfied with just growing & hybridizing.  He began to learn all he could & even began doing conversions on the Diploid Daylily.  One day we looked around, we had over 600 cultivars & numerous seedlings that folks were taking interest in.  That’s when we decided to become, “Kathy’s Daylilies”.  After many years of working with the Daylily we have introduced 77 daylilies and have more than 1279+ different cultivars.  Our dreams are to develop daylilies we consider worthy of introduction, high quality and one that’s never been done.  Bruce loves patterns and over time my interest grows more with the mini diploids.  I truly hope that our friends & friends of friends, will be amazed at our gift that we want to share with you.  Some wise words from some well-respected hybridizers left with us from the late Mr. Lane was, “Baby, I put pretty on pretty.  It might come out to be the ugliest thing you ever saw, or the most beautiful flower you could dream of.”  Another said, “Everyone should try hybridizing at least once.  If I could explain it best, it’s like a child’s Christmas, but for adults.  You just can’t wait to see what a new flower looks like for the very first time!”

We would like to thank Tim Bell, Pete Harry, Dan Trimmer, Guy Pierce, Singletary’s & many other hybridizer’s for sharing their knowledge of genetics, fertilization, fungicide application, & the art of conversion. We welcome you to “Kathy’s Daylilies”.  We hope our love for the Daylily will become just as addictive to you as it is to us.  Our travels across the USA continues to draw us towards Gardens to see