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A Daylily Spring-Cleaning
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 | 'Our Main Objective'
"This is our main objective. This is why we organized. To do the Daylily Garden," said Frieda Alexander, an affable lady with a sense of humor who also happens to be the Ozark Daylily Society president. "We're hoping the garden will eventually be recognized as a National Display Garden." The club's annual memberships are only $5 for individuals, $8 for couples, and, she said, "We give away about five plants at every meeting."
|  | Feeding the Daylilies
Cliff Garland, the club vice president, was busy broadcasting fertilizer pellets over the daylily beds. "We should see the first blooms around the end of June, first of July," he said. Cliff has donated countless daylilies to the garden, as has Pat Kost of Republic, Missouri.
|  | The Daylily Fare
On the menu for the spring feeding was a basic 13-13-13 fertilizer for a good start, mixed with slow-release Osmocote for sustained feeding. Mm-mmm. Don't it look good.
|  | Keeping Busy
Bev Long, the club's secretary, was stretched out across one bed busily filling her 5-gallon orange bucket with debris.
|  | Combing the Beds
Walt Long, Bev's husband, was combing the beds for weeds. "Don't forget the plant sale," he said. "We're having a daylily sale April 26th. It's in conjunction with the Master Gardeners Plant Sale in the park. We'll have a separate display." Cliff Garland added with a smile, “On June 28th, when the daylilies are in bloom, we’re having a garden tour and pot luck. Anyone can come. We just ask that they bring somethin’ good to eat.”
|  | The Ozark Daylily Society Website
The Plant Sale and Tour and Potluck aren't the club's only nifty event. You can find others, and news about memberships, contacts, and links--and photos of beautiful daylily gardens--can be found at the Ozark Daylily Society website at www.ozarkdaylily.org.
|  | The AHS
The folks who honor certain daylily gardens as National Display Gardens are those at the American Hemerocallis Society. The AHS website at www.daylilies.org is considered a superb source of information on daylilies and how to grow them. Note: Be sure to check its FAQ page.
|  | A Different Climate
Janet McWilliams, a Mississippi native who politely suggests that Ozarkers only think they know about summer heat and humidity, was pulling weeds, cutting away old growth, and brushing cedar mulch back to expose the season’s first green daylily shoots. Janet, a club board member, has now lived 11 years in Springfield and says with a smile, "I love it."
|  | The First Shoots
And here they are, the first shoots of 2008 in a daylily garden whose thousands of plants and hundreds of varieties promise, if all goes well, to be spectacular.
|  | A Grown-Up Daylily
This is one of the first full-grown daylilies to appear in the garden last summer. You can learn its name, read about it, and see even more colorful blossoms from last year's Daylily Garden here.
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