Lone Star Daylily Society
Gonzales, Texas
Established July 2, 1990

The Lone Star Daylily Society
By Elizabeth Cahoon
(Reprinted from the Winter 1991, Region 6 Daylily Newsletter)

There is a new star on the Region 6 horizon - the LONE STAR DAYLILY SOCIETY. Organized on July 2, 1990, we have been "daylilying" along and holding our meetings on the last Sunday of the month. Our membership now totals thirteen and more than 50% of our members are also American Hemerocallis Society members.

Our first club project was to promote our favorite flower and to encourage more people to join the American Hemerocallis Society. We feel the project was successful.

As a result of the interest and enthusiasm we have generated in daylilies during the past year and a half, there are over 200 more people growing daylilies in our areas than there were before we started our campaign. One of the garden clubs caught our "daylily fever" last year and purchased enough daylilies to create a beautiful daylily garden in front of the Memorial Museum. Tourists from all over come to visit this museum, so the garden has had great exposure. The garden club purchased only the newer varieties so it was really a nice treat for the visitors. One of the grammar schools also became interested in our favorite perennial, and the school children collected aluminum cans and sold them to raise money to buy enough daylilies to create a raised daylily bed down the side of the school that faces the street - and the "daylily bug" goes on and on. Since there was no place close to purchase daylilies, one of the local nurseries started carrying some of the new hybrids to accommodate her growing daylily clientele; she has not only become interested, she is now one of the newest members of American Hemerocallis Society (and she tells us she has customers anxiously waiting to see what she will have available in the Spring! Isn't the "daylily bug" wonderful?)

We used some of our first year's dues to purchase the brochure Daylilies, a Perennial Pleasure and have distributed it to garden clubs in different areas and to individuals who we thought would be good candidates for American Hemerocallis Society. We can claim credit for several new American Hemerocallis Society members but the tally won't be complete until the end of the year. Some have indicated that they were seriously considering joining but would rather wait and join for 1992.

Our newest project will be donating the book Daylilies, the Perfect Perennial by Lewis and Nancy Hill to as many public libraries in our areas as possible.

We will start with the Houston Branch Libraries. Some of our members live in the Houston area and were of tremendous help in spreading the "daylily word" in the Gonzales area, and now we are doing something to educate people about daylilies in their area. As a start, we are planning a Fall plant sale.

Our club has volunteered to be hosts and hostesses for a chuck wagon breakfast to be served in the garden of Pat and Chuck Thornton in Gonzales, Texas, on May 30, 1992, the Sunday morning after the Region 6 Meeting in Austin. Their garden is quite large (almost 2 acres) and features not only daylilies but interesting companion plants. We volunteered for this project to insure that even if anyone became ill at the last minute, it would go on as planned. We will send a formal invitation with more details to each of the clubs after the first of the year. The Thornton garden will be an open garden on Sunday.

The Lone Star Daylily Society is hoping to have 100% attendance at the Region 6 Meeting in Austin and to motivate our members we have come up with this idea - every member who attends the meeting will have his or her name included in a drawing for the daylily Hemerocallis 'Janice Brown'.

The officers of The Lone Star Daylily Society are:

Pat Thornton, President
Elizabeth Cahoon, 1st Vice President
D. D. Marpe, 2nd Vice President
Liz Logan, Secretary
C. L. Thornton, Treasurer and Historian

We are looking forward to the time when we can have our first Daylily Show! That will certainly be a highlight for our club. Till then we will just keep "daylilying" along educating people about daylilies and enjoying the fellowship of those who share our goals.

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