garden tours 2017

I'm a couple weeks late on this, but this year, for the first time, I went on the LIDS garden tours.

Each year, several members agree to open up their gardens for visits by members. There were five participating gardens this year, with each open for an hour or two. It's a two day affair for those who want to see it all, and you're largely seeing the same faces visiting each garden. I'm not going to name any of the people who opened their gardens -- I didn't get permission to use their names, and I don't know if they would object.

I've done a lot of work in the garden over the last several years. And, while it shows in many ways, no one would call our yard well-manicured. But these gardens are works of art. Seeing these I realize that, as much as I like my garden, I can't put it on the display tour unless I really up my game. Which ain't gonna happen. Then again, if you had told me, five years ago, that I would devote this much thought and energy on my flowers, I'd have laughed at you.

Four of the five gardens were heavy on the daylilies, which kind of makes sense since LIDS is a club of daylily enthusiasts. The last garden had fewer daylilies and more hostas -- probably because hostas are easier to care for, and the woman whose garden it was is getting up in years.

I will admit to a certain thrill when I noticed that people had the same cultivars in their display gardens that I have at home -- Spider Man, Becky Lynn and Spindazzle are a couple of examples. It should come as no surprise that I have some of the same cultivars as these people, since I got most of my daylilies at LIDS meetings and sales.

One member, Frank, spent some time discussing with me how to go about pollenating daylilies, which is coming in handy, since now I'm trying my hand at hybridizing. I'll write another blog post about that some other time. If I get around to it. What was also nice was that the lady with the hosta-heavy yard was handing out sheets of paper with the names of mail-order houses she orders plants from. Blair and I have already placed two (hosta-heavy) orders with places on that sheet. The first one came late last week, and we spent a lot of time this weekend planting. The second order should be shipping tomorrow.