GLOUCESTER — Debbie and Donald Rhodes smiled contentedly as they looked over row upon row of daylilies in what has now been recognized as a National Historical Display Garden by the American Daylily Society. Almost hidden amid the back roads near Hayes in Gloucester County, the garden, at 6631 Fosque Lane, has been developed over the past nine years by the couple who, at this time of the year, spend many hours a day among their plants. Donald bought his first plant, named Bela Lugosi (and it’s still in his garden) at a farmers market in Yorktown, and almost immediately became interested in daylilies.
Now nearly a decade later, the garden has more than 650 named varieties. That doesn’t include “any that we’ve hybridized,” explained Debbie Rhodes. “We probably have about 1,000 seedlings that he’s crossed.
” It takes an effort to cross the plants, creating new lilies and new color combinations. “Debbie gave me a book — ‘The New Encyclopedia of Daylilies’ — one Christmas that contained a lot of information about daylilies and how to cross them,” he said. The couple began actively buying plants on various trips to and from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when they would stop at a daylily garden along the way.
Heidi and Charles Douglas of Georgetown, South Carolina, well-known daylily growers and hybridizers, “have become friends,” Debbie explained. “We buy plants from them and meet them at conventions” and get information from them. The Rhodes co.
