Daylily Display Garden in Davidsonville Open on Saturday

One of the prettiest gardens known to the American Hemerocallis Society is right in a residential backyard in Davidsonville. If that doesn’t mean much to you, you might just be unfamiliar with the scientific name of the daylily, a perennial that blooms in backyards and roadsides from Maine to Florida (gardening zones 1 to 11).

It’s really OK if you don’t know about the AHS. I didn’t know either. Luckily, their website has all the details on the 56,000 named varieties of these bloomers. They are easy to grow and easy to hybridize. In Faith and Jerry Bange’s garden, there are over 2,500 varieties, some common, some rare, but all beautiful.

And the really great thing is, the Bange’s garden, “Fay’s Bloomers,” is open to the public on Saturday as an AHS daylily display garden. If you stop by, you will see a beautiful garden in full bloom.

It is simply breathtaking.

Located in the Foxhall neighborhood at 3508 Foxhall Drive in Davidsonville, the Banges will also be selling cultivars from their gardens and the gardens of other daylily enthusiasts from the area.

More to the story after the pictures:

We stopped by the garden on Friday, just as Faith’s army of daylily-faithful friends had finished deadheading the blossoms. A daylily bloom lasts about 24 hours. Taking the old blooms off (deadheading) encourages new blossoms to break open.

Although the daylilies weren’t in top form for photographing, it was nonetheless enjoyable  to wander the garden and see all the expectant blooms ready to burst. She’s also got plenty of other flowers and plants, arranged around the daylilies in interesting vignettes.

The garden will be open Saturday. Park along Foxhall Road and go up the driveway. You’ll see everyone congregating near the garden entrance by the garage. Sometimes you’ll see painters setting up for an afternoon of Plein Air painting.

For those inspired by Fay’s Bloomers, check out the National Capital Daylily Club which will be the hosts of the “NCDC Daylily Show” on Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Behnke Nurseries in Beltsville.

Later in August, the NCDC Daylily Sale & Auction will host a plant auction at 9 a.m. on August 11 at the Davidsonville Ruritan Center on Route 424.

And for fans of the Nia Vardalos movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” Hemerocallis is from the Greek word hēmerokalles (hemera meaning “day” + kallos meaning “beauty”).