Divine Daylilies

Bluff City Couple Sharing Love Of Colorful Flowers Through Business

BLUFF CITY, Tenn. – Rainbows have nothing on daylilies.
Far more colorful than a momentary candy stripe in the sky, daylilies rock more colors than even Crayola.
Drive out to Good Daylilies and see for yourself. Owned by Spike and Donna Good, their business features more than 1,700 varieties of daylilies in countless arrays of colors, about 1,400 of which are available for sale.
“There is every color imaginable,” Donna Good said.
Her husband Spike looked over at their three acres of gardens, squinted his eyes and elaborated.
“They range from black to white,” he said between sips of a soft drink. “We have one that’s as black as your pants.”

DAYLILIES
Daylilies bloom primarily from late June to early July. Blooms last for one day, hence their name of daylilies.
“Daylilies are the number one perennial,” Donna Good said. “They are easy to grow. You have to work to kill them.”
Evocative to historic to angelic to downright odd names adorn each of the thousands of varieties. That their names vary from the sublime to the silly to the inspiring to the interesting mirrors the enormous array of appearances of the flowers.
“Every one looks different,” said Deb Jankowiak, a customer of Good Daylilies from Allegan, Mich. “Some are fragrant, and some are not.”
About the names, there’s Wyatt Earp and Pearl Harbor. Nods to cartoons emerge via Grape Ape and Yabba Dabba Doo. A few are named after movies – High Noon, Mask of Zorro – and others after songs – Knights in White Satin, Lady Madonna.
Some such as the rose and yellow colored Just Plain Pretty simply tell it like it is.
“They’re more than just flowers in the ground,” Donna said.

GOOD DAYLILIES
The Goods’ love of daylilies dates back to 1991. After attempting to grow roses with varying degrees of success, they acquired about 20 daylilies from a friend.
“Then, we got a few more and a few more and a few more,” Donna said, “and now we’ve got more than 1,700.”
Sounds like a lot and indeed it is, but consider that more than 55,000 varieties of daylilies are known to exist. The Goods said that more than 1,800 new daylilies are introduced each year.
Established in 2000, Good Daylilies began simply yet grew like Jack’s beanstalk. As daylilies aficionados gravitated to them, they told others and then they also passed it on.
“In 2000, we made about $700, and we thought that was wonderful,” Spike said. “The first three or four years, man, we couldn’t get them in the ground fast enough.”
That’s in part because of their decision to expand their business to the Internet in 2001. Their Web site, http://www.gooddaylilies.net, features photographs of more than 1,400 varieties of daylilies along with extensive pricing lists.
“The majority of our sales are from the Internet,” Donna said.
They attribute their rocketing Internet sales of late to high gas prices.
“The Internet is probably 75 percent of our business,” Spike said, “this year anyway.”
Prices range wildly from $5 on the low end to about $200 on the high and rare end of the spectrum.

FLOWERS OF THE FLOCK
Yet just as daylilies are more than simply flowers, the Goods’ Web site is more than just another commercial site. Christian music prompts when the site loads and then plays throughout the visit. Flip through dozens of pages of daylilies and sporadically inserted Biblical quotations break the monotony.
Details, perhaps, but when Jankowiak cast her attention to the site, she stayed.
“They have a great site,” Jankowiak said. “Plus, they are very clear about their Christian background. Sometimes, I just minimize the site and listen to the music.”
Donna Good sat on one of several picnic tables in the shade of 100-year-old oak trees on a sloping section of their backyard, which also serves as a rentable picnic area for up to 32 people. Spike Good sat beside her. Daylilies grow all about the area.
She looked in the direction of their beloved daylilies.
“I really believe that part of this is a ministry,” Donna said. “You can use what you’re doing to glorify God. You can walk through the garden, and it makes you feel so good.”
Apparently so.

CALM REIGNS
Deb and Bill Jankowiak drove down from their home in Michigan in June with the intention of visiting Good Daylilies. They took a week’s vacation in June, drove 14 hours, camped in the area and visited a number of sites of interest throughout the region.
But Good Daylilies sparked their adventure.
“I thought, you know, we ought to take a trip down there sometime,” Deb Jankowiak said. “It was very much worth the drive. They are very nice people, and we got to walk through their rows of daylilies.”
Peace wafts among the daylilies. A poi pond generously stocked with fish in colors of red and orange and green and white occupies a small corner of their property. Wooden swings and chairs and a gazebo await occupants throughout the gardens.
Calm reigns so much so that it’s easy to forget that a business buzzes thereon.
“We spent three or four hours just wandering through their gardens,” Jankowiak said.
Long days of work and many a shirt soaked in sweat in concert with love overflowing from the Goods built those gardens. Business is good. But the Goods said there’s much more involved than just money in the bank.

SEEKING SOLACE?
Take the woman whose husband died last year. He was buried on a Friday, and the next day she sought solace at Good Daylilies.
“She just wanted to come down and get some peace,” Spike said.
Beauty lives within the peaceful calm of the Goods’ gardens. Walk across a small bridge or sit in the gazebo or just lounge at the picnic tables and look.
Donna and Spike Good work hard. Yet, they each said true credit for the flowers of their labors falls upon the touch of a higher power’s hand.
“People say, ‘Your flowers look so beautiful.’ I say I don’t have anything to do with the pretty,” Spike said. “I can water them and take care of them. I can’t make the sun come up and go down. I can’t take care of the pretty.”

INFO
What: Good Daylilies
Where: 305 Jonesboro St., Bluff City, TN 37618
Info: (423) 538-4732
Web: http://www.gooddaylilies.net
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. from May through September or by appointment

TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at .