Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Daylilies available during special sale
BELLA VISTA — Members of the Bella Vista Garden Club are planning a special plant sale this month. It all started with a Facebook post.
A collector in Elm Springs who wants to remain anonymous made the difficult decision to downsize his late wife’s daylily collection. The man and his wife had spent years acquiring and, sometimes developing, varieties of daylilies.
A friend saw the Bella Vista Garden Club’s Facebook page and contacted the group. Did the club want some of the collection of hundreds of daylilies? Garden club members did and a project got underway.
There are thousands of varieties of daylilies, garden club member Joal Miller said. They come in different sizes and shapes and colors. They can be very valuable.
She was one of the members who got to meet and speak to the collector. He hated to give up the plants, but it was getting to be too much for him. They walked his daylily beds and he pointed out the hybrids that his wife had developed that he wouldn’t give up.
Other Garden Clubs had been interested in the collection, she explained, but one thing that makes the Bella Vista group unique is its partnership with Village Wastewater off of U.S. 71. The Garden Club has a greenhouse there, as well as several outside beds. With the help of the wastewater
staff, large numbers of plants can be kept thriving on the site while club members get ready for a sale.
Few clubs have that kind of resource.
Miller ran the last garden club plant sale as a mostly online event. To keep both volunteers and customers safe from the coronavirus, the annual sale became by-appointment-only, with a handful of volunteers manning the wastewater site. Those same volunteers were drafted to help move the daylilies.
During July, they met very early in the morning to travel to Elm Springs and dig daylilies. Each one was carefully labeled and brought back to the greenhouse, where the same volunteers repotted them and labeled them. Some of the larger
plants were divided. Each pot has at least two “fans,” which is a group of leaves along with baby bulbs attached below the surface. They’ll spread easily, volunteer Cathy Downard said.
Downard looked online and got photos and retail prices for each of the 40-plus varieties they dug in Elm Springs. Although the retail price on a few is close to $100, the garden club won’t sell any pots for over $25 and most will be $5 or $10.
In spite of their careful work, a few plants could not be identified, so the volunteers will put those aside and watch to see what the blooms look like. Once identified, they may go into some future sale.
The best time to plant daylilies in this area is early spring or late fall, according to The
American Daylily Society on its webpage, daylilies.org. Most daylilies do best in full sun but can tolerate some shade as long as they get six hours of sun a day.
Daylily blooms only last a day, Miller pointed out, but plants will have several blooms, and a well-planned daylily bed will have several varieties that bloom at different times, so there’s always color.
Since the appointment-style plant sale worked out so well, the fall daylily sale will be held the same way, and next spring’s sales probably will as well. Customers like having the chance to talk to the Garden Club members about their purchases, she said. The Fall Daylily Sale will be held Sept. 17 through Sept. 20.
All the plants will be listed on the webpage, www.bellavistagardenclub.com, with photos and information, including the usual retail price and the Garden Club’s price. Besides daylilies, there will be some trees and shrubs sold and some naked lady bulbs. Some of that information will be on the club’s Facebook page as well.
Customers will make a 30-minute appointment to shop beginning at 8 a.m. Thursday. Appointments are made on a first-come, firstserve basis. Payments must be exact cash, check, credit card or PayPal. Everyone must wear a mask to enter the facility.