The Oakes Daylilies Farm is a three generation family-owned farm.
In the 1960s, father and son Bill and Stewart Oakes had a hobby of growing daylilies, which has expanded into a nationwide mail order nursery.
In the 1970s, they began offering daylilies for sale.
In the 1980s, Stewart's son Ken began helping in the nursery by digging lilies for the customers.
In the 1990s, the first color catalog was published, allowing customers to see the varieties of colors available.
In 1999 the first Daylilies Bloom Festival was held and has continued ever since in June.
In 2020, after 20 years of the festival, it was canceled due to the COVID pandemic. When returning this year they replaced the Bloom Festival with Open Garden Days, which they offered three weekends on June 18-19, and June 25-26, and July 2-3 from 9 a.m. till noon.
Open Garden Days are a little different and not as large of an event.
No music by local artists, vendors booths, or kids' tent. But they still had the beautiful gardens open with over 1,000 varieties of daylilies to stroll through and they were still offering to take orders to ship.
The greenhouses filled with potted plants, perennials, hostas, grasses and such were open.
On the day I visited there was a large tent filled with a large variety of lilies beautifully displayed, where we could view and select for purchase, just as they had at the Bloom Festival in the past. It was a visit well worth the time.
The Oakes family say daylilies are among the most carefree and easy-to-grow perennials, They are very tolerant of a wide range of conditions, and are very forgiving of gardening mistakes. You can find how to grow and care for daylilies on the Oakes Daylilies web site.
If you missed the Open Garden Days, just go to their website, oakesdaylilies.com. You can view daylilies there and place an order. They ship all over the country. Be sure to look for the dates of next year's event on this website.