By Kathy Bohannon
Kathy Bohannon photos
For Coastal Senior

Joan Senior was the last bloom in the garden of John and Julia Pritchard of Savannah. Scorching temperatures in August didn't wilt the hearty daylily.

More information

The Joiner Daylily Gardens are located at 9630 Whitfield Avenue in Savannah and are open only in May and June. Hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.

ON THE WEB:

To view a selection of Joiner daylilies:
www.joinergardens.com

For more information about the American Hemerocallis Society:
www.daylilies.org/

Visit Papa's web site:
www.daylily.net/gardens/ papasdaylilies

Or visit his home page:
home.ifriendly.com/ ~papaslilies/INDEX.htm

Tips for successful daylilies from Frances Joiner:

• Plant early, before cold weather.
  
  
• Prepare soil to a ph of 6.5
  
  
• Don't plant under oak trees
  
  
• Don't plant too deep.
  
  
• Use ground pine bark
  
  
• Water every few days (depending on rain) and fertilize.
  
  

An August breeze tugged at the few remaining blooms in the Joiner Daylily Gardens on Savannah's Whitfield Avenue. Enman Joiner took a short afternoon break to relax in a garden gazebo. It was a short pause from nurturing the plants he loves, and since the season for colorful blooms has passed, Joiner is busy preparing his daylilies for fall catalog sales and garden displays next year.

Enman Joiner

At Joiner Daylily Gardens, the months after August are filled with plenty to do before a grand show of daylily blooms burst forth in May. Enman, his daughter-in-law Jan, and grandson Aaron are busy turning the soil and readying their gardens for the upcoming season.

Joiner says his daughter-in-law is the "mainstay" of the family business now. "She works harder than we do," he stated. Eighteen-year-old grandson Aaron just received a scholarship from the American Hemerocallis Society, and the teen has already dabbled in creating his own cultivars.

"We're proud of what he is doing," Joiner said. "He's done a little hybridizing and has had some successes in it."

If young Aaron is anything like his grandparents, he just might want to get used to succeeding. Mention the word 'daylily' in Savannah, and you will probably hear "Joiner." The Joiner family has been breeding daylilies since 1956, starting at their home on Isle of Hope. When Enman and his wife, Frances, moved there, he didn't think much about a small clump of daylilies growing in the yard. Once they bloomed, he realized how beautiful they were. Joiner said the yard consisted of a few oak trees and a patch of daylilies.

"They smiled everyday at me," he said. "Every morning (the daylily) had new faces, and I thought there must be something to this."

Joiner began to read about the plants and eventually sent $10 to a nursery in Texas for his first purchase of daylilies.

"When they started blooming, I was hooked. People came out to the yard just to see them." Joiner purchased the Whitfield Avenue property and soon became a hybridizer. Today, his gardens are filled with 99 percent of their own creations, according to Joiner.

"We buy one now and then if we think it will enhance what we are breeding toward," he explained.

Creating the perfect daylily takes plenty of knowledge and patience. The typical daylily takes six years to go from seedling to cultivar, and Joiner estimated that they had more than 20,000 seeds in the refrigerator ready to plant at the end of August and first of September. The process involves several years of planting and evaluating.

"We used to put the seeds in the seed bed and transplant them, but we don't do that anymore," he explained. "We seed them directly into the earth where they are going to stay. By doing that, we are blooming them in nine months, instead of the year and a half. From that, we see them bloom, and each morning, I carry a bunch of white paper tags in my pocket. I evaluate each of them as I go through, and if I think one warrants keeping, I put a tag on them."

Joiner makes note of the stalks, or "scapes" on each daylily.

"In June, before the scape dies and goes away, we are going to transplant it where it will have room to grow and clump," He added, "That process takes a year to eighteen months."

At that point, the daylilies are only getting started in the Joiner gardens. The next step finds Joiner selecting from that group and choosing plants to "line out." Lining out is the process where the clumps are separated and each fan in planted. Another evaluation is held the next year, and those selected will be evaluated another year. By the sixth year, the decision is made whether or not the daylily is suitable for keeping.

In the beginning, Joiner balanced work, family, and his "budding" business. "I used to work at Union Camp," he said. "I would dash by, see (the gardens) in the afternoons, or weekends, holidays and vacations. Any time I had off, I was here. In the meantime, (Frances) was here pollinating every thing in the book. We'd gather it all in a pie plate to start with, no records, no nothing. Now, it's gotten really complicated."

Joiner has an estimated 50,000 seedlings at his gardens to select from. They will choose probably a 100-200 to keep and evaluate, beginning the six-year process.



Jan Joiner, daughter-in-law of Enman Joiner, is the "mainstay" of the family business now. Jan's eighteen-year-old son Aaron has begun to carry the family tradition of hybridizing daylilies.

The cyclical process goes on all tear, year in and year out. One area holds seeds, another first years, another second years, and so on. Joiner gestured toward a greenhouse as Jan worked in the background.

"We are gathering seeds that we have pollinated now, and we're planting. Others are being pulled up and moved to clump." Named cultivars are being transplanted to be among the 150,000 daylilies at the gardens.

The seasonal display in breathtaking. Daylilies stretch to gather as much sun and breeze as they can absorb in their single day of life. As one group of blooms die, another fills its place, and the cycle continues until the end of the season. Joiner said one of his most memorable visitors was a woman who was 93 years old. She was part of a senior citizens group who came to tour the gardens.

"She couldn't walk around to look, so we let her sit in the gardens at a table with an umbrella," Joiner explained. "She said, 'This is what I picture heaven to look like.' I'll remember that for a long time." A special roadway now runs through the garden so visitors who are unable to walk may drive through.

Hemerocallis , the Latin name for daylilies, means "Beauty for a day," and Joiner, who is a member of the American Hemerocallis Society, has about 500 different cultivars (varieties) in his gardens. Prices range from a few dollars to the most expensive variety - selling around $200 for a clump.

Joiner said the daylily is an herb, and is used for medicine and consumed as a delicacy in the Orient. The buds are fried like okra or cooked into soup. A visitor to the garden once prepared the soup for the family, but the result didn't appeal to them. Joiner said the daylily also contains a deadly poison, but supposedly not enough to hurt a person.

The family is creative when naming the cultivars. There's Rib Tickling, Spring Event and Savannah Cabana, but one of the most special is named after his wife.

"He had this daylily that he liked, and we were about to have a national convention," Frances Joiner explained. "I was involved in the (Fall 1988) show, and when I returned from lunch it had won. He had a little note on it saying it was going to be named for (me), and that's the first I knew about it." While Joiner was proud of that cultivar, his current favorite is the newest flower, Miracle Mama. As a hearty sun lover, Miracle Mama has many desired daylily attributes.

"Normally, they melt in the sun, but this one doesn't," Joiner said with pride. "It's got terrific substance. It takes heat to open it, and it stays open until 9 o'clock at night. That is very unusual for a lavender color."

John and Julia Pritchard of Savannah are also fans of the daylily. Julia has been a member of the Savannah Hemerocallis Society for about 12 years. She has always enjoyed gardening, and began growing daylilies in 1991.

Competing in flower shows and hosting garden tours at their home is just part of her involvement. Julia also judges shows at the Coastal Empire fair and other shows held out of town. Retired from Environmental Protection Agency in Washington D.C., Pritchard frequently attends classes at the University of Georgia to maintain her judge status.

Half of her garden is filled with Joiner cultivars. A stack of ribbons from the Savannah Hemerocallis Society's show in May revealed several first place awards and a Most Prestigious award for her entries.

Joiner gardens named a daylily after Julia Pritchard, and she said of the honor, "I thought it was wonderful. It just tickled me to death." Other honors include a dried floral design featured in the Garden Club of Georgia calendar. The design included oleander and a bentwood rocker piece, which created a swirled effect. Pritchard holds degrees in art and photography, and she is a member of several clubs and organizations including the Savannah Camellia Club.

Like most daylily enthusiasts, Pritchard said she doesn't have any favorites because she enjoys them all. "It's the one you see at the time," she said. In a walk around the garden, John Pritchard stopped to feed the goldfish that live in the water garden. He said his role in the hobby is that of "the hole digger, the planter, and the weed puller." But his wife smiled and said, "He helps me in all of this."

Another well-known name in the local hemerocallis world is Ray Parker of Effingham County.

Parker and his wife Joyce own and operate Papa's Daylilies, located at 1787 Noel C. Conaway Road (Highway 30) in Effingham County. Serving as president of the Savannah Hemerocallis Society for 2002, Parker works daily among the many beds he has carefully arranged on his property.

Parker said a move to Richmond Hill in 1985 introduced him to daylilies, and he was hooked. The home he moved to was that of a former daylily hybridizer and president of the American Hemerocallis Society. Hundreds of daylilies were left behind and Parker began to take interest in them. One trip to the Joiner Gardens in Savannah was all it took for Parker to start growing and hybridizing his own daylilies.

Purchasing inexpensive daylilies didn't last long. Parker soon found himself looking at the $100 breeder plants featured in catalogs. Hybridizing is "the fun part of growing daylilies," he said, and he enjoys naming his after his grandchildren. All of his cultivars begin with the name "Papa."

Parker enjoys the vast array of colors seen in today's daylilies. In an effort to assist other daylily enthusiasts, Parker has created a daylily map of Georgia. The map is available by mail or on his website.