How I Spent My Saturday or A Daylily Show

What did you do on Saturday?  This weekend was the North Texas Daylily Society's Daylily Show.  This year the club did something a little different.  They held a combination accredited (though the American Daylily Society) and unaccredited show.

The accredited show was judged by professional judges.  They look for a lot of things, but the most important is how well the flower represents the registered standard.  When a hybridizer registers a new daylily they supply a variety of information included size, color and form.  In an accredited show, it's important that your flower meets these criteria.  Points are taken off if it's too big, too small, the wrong color, etc.  They also don't like the color to be blemished, scapes being crooked, damage to the reproductive parts, too many spent blooms on the scape, pollen on the pertals, or buds that impede on the bloom.  They are basically fanatically picky.

If you want to enter a show the first step is locating one.  They are all listed on the American Daylily Society's webpage.  A day or two prior to the show you should survey your garden and figure out what looks like it's going to be in bloom.  The night before is a good time to finalize plans and fill out your entry cards.  The morning of the show it's time to pick your scapes.  It can be hard cutting an entire scape from your garden and some folks exhibit off-scape blooms (blooms in floral picks).

Once everything has been selected, it's time to groom your scapes.  This can be summarized as: if it's brown cut/pull it off.  You want your scapes to look "fresh" so all the brown imperfections need to go in an accredited show.  Some people use a lot of different tools.  I use my fingernails and an exacto knife.  I also don't worry too much about perfection.

Then comes the scariest part of the whole process for me...time to load them into your car and drive across town to the show.  I fill a rubbermaid tub with 2 litter soda bottles and put each bloom in one bottle.  Other people have pvc pipe rigs they've made or just use buckets.  Once at the show location, the classification person will check your entries to make sure you have them in the correct section and the placement person will place them by alphabetically by section on tables.

At this point you wait for the judges to do their thing.  I entered 10 blooms in the accredited show and did okay.  It's only my third show and each year I've done a bit better.  Here are my accredited entries:

'Statuesque'

'Nutmeg Elf'

'Citronella Starfish'

'Euro-mazing'

'On Silken Threads'

'Pursuit of Happiness'

'Sweet Seneca Butterflies'

'South Seas'

'Midnight Magic'

'Spider Miracle'

All but one of my entries got a blue ribbon and four of them received a purple ribbon (95 or more points out of 100 total).  The only second place (red) ribbon I got this year was for Sweet Seneca Butterflies.  I honestly knew I shouldn't enter it due to it's registration size of 2.5 inches and my plants size of 4 inches, but I did anyway since it's a favorite of mine.

There was also an unaccredited show going on at the same time.  This show was a popularity poll for the public.  Everyone who attended got stickers to vote for their favorites.  No grooming required, though I did a bit on each scape.  I entered a few blooms in this one too.  One of my accredited entries accidentally got placed by a volunteer in this show instead.  I was pretty irritated because it was a good flower and would have done well, but oh well.  Two of my blooms came in the top ten in popularity.  Here are my entries for this portion of the show:

'Hudson Valley'

'Primal Scream'

'Pathway to Paradise'

'Walk in Space'

I also ran the clubs education table, providing information about daylilies (planting, grow, etc.) and the true "Plant Geek" did placement for the show.  Saturday was a busy day for our family.  After a long day of horticulture fun, we picked up our daughter from the in-laws, came home, and swam in the pool and enjoyed out own garden.

Have you ever entered a flower show?  While part of me thinks they're sort of old fashioned, the other part of me can't help but be caught up in the fun of it all.