The Gage’s interest in daylilies began in 1954 when, as a young couple in their first small home in Houston they began raising their family and bought their first daylily, yellow of course. On a narrow, winding, dead end country road in 1977 they built their current home. It sits on one and one half acres nestled among tall pines, oaks, sweet gums, and under story dogwood, yaupon and sassafras. So isolated in those early years, when a car passed they would run out to see who it was but now, since the bridging of Spring Creek, and access to nearby Woodlands, with everything that a city has to offer plus subdivisions going in all around, the road noise is sometimes so loud they can barely converse with customers in the garden. The commercial daylily garden was opened in 1981 with just a couple of small beds and each year expanded as brush and trees were cleared until now the daylilies cover half an acre. Deer were always a problem so early on an electric fence was found to be the best solution.

When the daylily clubs in the area decided to host the 2008 AHS Convention, restructuring was begun by purchasing many newer cultivars and converting the garden, bed by bed, from digging and selling beds to displays of clumps. The garden is now comprised of over 1000 registered cultivars with over 300 from 2000 and later. Of those about 60 are guest plants most of which are very recent registrations. From over 150 different hybridizers, all types from doubles, spiders and unusual forms to the newest wide petaled, eyed and multiple edged daylilies are represented. There are some seedlings but the Gage hybridizing program has not been extensive.

Red and white roses trail along an antique split rail fence. The fragrance of Cape jasmine wafts through the garden and there are large white crinum ‘Ratrayii’ whose wonderful wide erect foliage is an asset even after blooming is finished. Plumeria are scattered here and there among the daylilies but likely only their bare skeletons with a few leaves on the tips will adorn the garden since their blooms usually begin in June or later. In this rustic styled garden, look for a bit of whimsy reflecting the convention theme, “Daylilies Boot Scootin’ to Texas”.