Lilies beautify home, carry on family tradition

Pat Willis of Dyersburg examines the bloom of one of the many daylilies creating a riot of color and tradition in the garden spot of her home. Willis continues to nurture and add to the lilies her aunt and grandmother started at her family's homeplace.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

For Pat Willis of Dyersburg, the joy of growing daylilies has been a family tradition since she was a little girl.

In fact, her grandmother planted the love of gardening into her family in the same homeplace where Willis now resides. A tradition that Willis now nurtures with a yield that mixes her family's heirloom lilies, hybrids and more common varieties in a riot of blooms celebrating both tradition and family.

"I grew up watching my grandmother, Kate Moore, and my aunt, Mabel Hendrix tending to their gardens and proudly showing off each new bloom to anyone who wanted to see them," said Willis. "In the 1970s my aunt started sharing some of her iris, jonquils, roses, and daylilies with me but I quickly found that I loved the daylilies the most. I love daylilies because they are so forgiving. You can forget to water, and they still bloom. You don't have to weed very much. In fact they multiply so fast, they choke most of the weeds out of your garden. They come back year after year, more plentiful than the year before."

Mabel Hendrix was featured for her flowers in the State Gazette on July 18, 1984.

"I read awhile back that when you get older, you're liable to get contrary if you don't have a hobby," said Hendrix in the newspaper article. "I've really got a hobby. My mother loved flowers and she taught me to love them."

In the article, Hendrix said roses were her first love but lilies were her pride and joy. When Hendrix's health declined and she was moved to a nursing home, Willis was charged with moving and nurturing her aunt's favorite flowers.

"All my life I've been looking at her flowers and her lilies, but I never dreamed I'd ever be taking care of them. She told me which ones to dig up and I moved them to my yard. I knew nothing about it except for they were pretty flowers. Over the years I developed quite a spread of flowers and each year would dig up and divide and move or share with my friends or co-workers. In the summer of 2003, I started moving some of my plants to my parents' home."

When Willis's father suffered a stroke five years ago, she had already begun transplanting flowers to the same homeplace where her grandmother taught her father's sister, Mabel, all about flowers. Willis continued to move her aunt's heirloom bulbs to the landscape of her parents' home. Since that time, she has added over 300 plants and 175 varieties to the garden area, all helter-skelter in the field beside the house she now calls home again.

"My father had a stroke in 2004 and I wanted to be out there to help out as much as I could," said Willis. "I found out quickly that I couldn't take care of my yard and still be out there, so I started moving all my plants to that little garden spot. I would be outside transplanting buckets full of plants with my daddy sitting in his chair watching. I think he enjoyed it as much as I did. I officially moved out there in 2007 and now am able to walk through my lilies every day and enjoy them. My father died in April of this year, but I know he is still enjoying seeing my beautiful flowers that started with his sister and mother."

Willis's lilies are not manicured and landscaped into a formal garden that contains them by species or color. Instead, they grow uninhibited, in wild abandon with the colors and textures playing off each other in the hot summer sun.

"My friends tease me for having ditch lilies in with my hybrids," said Willis. "But I just enjoy looking at all the colors blooming together. My garden is not a show garden and is not landscaped but is just row after row of colorful daylilies. My children call me the 'Crazy Flower Lady.' It won't make Southern Living, but it's been my therapy.

"I can get out in the hot sun and dig and forget about everything. It's a lot cheaper than a therapist," Willis continued with a laugh. "Well, I don't know. I've spent a lot. Maybe it's just a lot prettier than a therapist!"

A trip to Oakes Daylily Festival in Corryton, Tenn. in 2004 was all it took to hook Willis on growing the beautiful flowers. The next year, she took her cousin, Kathy King with her.

"(I) got her addicted to the daylily habit with me," said Willis. "We bought several plants there and have been back every year up until this year. Each year buying more varieties. We have also bought in Jackson and Nashville and ordered from different sources. The garden spot is now full of hundreds of beautiful, colorful daylilies. Kathy and I usually divide what we buy so that we both have one of each variety."

Under her family name, Willis has established Moore Lilies, an outlet to sell the flowers and pass on the striking blooms to others who will enjoy their beauty.

"I sell them now," said Willis, who provides them locally and through eBay. "I have also sent plants to relatives in Texas, Florida and California. My grandmother and aunt would be so proud to see that Kathy and I have carried on the Moore family love of their flowers. It's all coming around full circle."