New Regional Publicity Director!

Meet Dorothian Meyer! 

She has accepted the challenge to be the Regional Publicity Director for the largest region in AHS!   The primary responsibilities of the RPD are to be the champion of the Popularity Poll in our region, maintain good communications between the local clubs and the AHS and contribute to the regional newsletter and events.  The RPD also generally promotes events in our region to our regional membership and the regional community at-large.  Local clubs should send a copy of their local newsletter to her, as she is a voting member of the board who chooses the Newsletter Award each year!  If you are a president of a Region 2 local club, please contact her with your updated officers for 2011.  Whew!  Being the RPD is a very important job! 

Dorothian sent in this bio, letting us get to know her a bit better.  You can meet her at this years National Convention or this summers Region 2 Summer Meeting being hosted in her home state of Michigan.  Her garden is listed as an open garden for the event. 

BIOGRAPHY:  I grew up in a small town in western Michigan and we always had a small garden.  There were some vegetables and mostly flowers, usually annuals.  When I got married and moved to Bad Axe, Michigan had children I started a fairly large vegetable garden to help with the expense of feeding the family.  After my children were grown I took a couple years off from gardening.  My sister asked me to come to her house in 1982 and help her get her garden ready for the Region 11 garden tour and I came home with an extra suitcase full of daylilies. The addiction just kept growing from there.  I grow 700 varieties both older and newer varieties on my 100x200 foot property in the country and it is an AHS Display Garden.  I am a Michigan Advanced Master Gardener, a Daylily Exhibition Judge and a Garden Judge.  I also belong to 3 daylily clubs, 2 in Michigan and 1 in Florida. I am a plant collector and love to collect unusual perennials and shrubs that will grow in my zone 5 garden (where I am fast running out of room). I belong to the Rose Society and also a local garden club in Florida where I spend the winter. 

 

My garden is open for visits in July and August, but please call ahead to make sure I will be home. 

Dorothian Meyer

1963 Van Dyke

Bad Axe, Michigan

48413

863-273-9335

dorothian@msn.com

Thank you for volunteering, Dorothian!  And an extra special thank you to the outgoing RPD, Joyce Hersh.  She has been a real asset to this region for several years, and we will miss her greatly when she moves to Florida!  Thank you, Joyce - from all of us!

Popularity Poll 2011

The American Hemerocallis Society's annual Popularity Poll is official! It has been posted to the AHS website. You can find Region 2 full results here!

Joyce Hersh, our wonderfully efficient (and retiring) Regional Publicity Director provided the following report:

H. 'Primal Scream' ran away with the lead this year!!   But, you can see, there was very close competition in other groupings.

In 2010, 24% (306 ballots) of the 1298 members participated in this poll.

With the prescribed ballot, voting took a bit of a turn this year. We started with 101 cultivars and had 581 in the end. A total of 372 cultivars received only one vote and 76 received only two votes. Thus, only 23% of the cultivars received three or more votes.

There was some very dramatic movement:

• H. 'Persian Ruby' went from 31 last year to number 7 this year!
• H. 'Shores of Time' went from 17 to 9 this year.
• The number 15 spot was shared by three cultivars that made pretty dramatic movement to get there: H. 'Michael Bennet' moved up from 35 the previous year; H. 'Peggy Jeffcoat' moved from 26; and H. 'Lavender Blue Baby' moved from 23 last year.  

Here are the TOP TEN for Region 2 (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio:)

1. Primal Scream (101 votes)

2. Webster's Pink Wonder (73 votes)

3. All American Chief (72 votes)

4. Ruby Spider (67 votes)

5. Bela Lugosi (60 votes)

6. Heavenly Angel Ice (55 votes)

7. Persian Ruby (49 votes)

8. Swallow Tail Kite (46 votes)

9. Shores of Time (45 votes)

10. Beautiful Edgings and South Seas (tie) (41 votes)

Thank you for the awesome report, Joyce!

I am almost embarrassed to admit I only grow two of our regional winners, but they are the "top two" so I get some slack for that!  I have grown others from this list in the past, but for one reason or another, chose to move them out in favor of new and different daylilies.  Here is our winner, H. 'Primal Scream' in my Michigan garden this summer.  It is a past Stout Silver Medal winner, introduced by the amazing Curt Hanson from northern Ohio.  This is the first unusual form daylily to be awarded the societies highest individual cultivar award.

From the AHS Website:  As a service to its members and to the general public, each year the American Hemerocallis Society (AHS) conducts a popularity poll among its members to determine the favorite daylilies from each region. It is the hope of the AHS that this Popularity Poll presents a true picture of which daylilies perform well in a given area and which are best liked by the membership. Popularity polls are important to daylily growers -- both AHS members and nonmembers -- who make daylily selections for purchase.

Thanks to all who participated in the poll!

September Update from the President...

Hello and Happy September, Region 2-ers!

THE REAL STORY

Contrary to recent rumors, I am returning as the President of Region 2 for 2011-12. Detailed in the upcoming Region 2 newsletter, the elections to select a Regional President and AHS Director at the 2010 Summer Meeting were invalid. The procedures as outlined in the newly ratified regional bylaws was not followed and the result was a voided election. However, AHS has a procedure to insure the continuity of officers should anything out of the ordinary occur, and thanks to the help of the AHS President and AHS Counsel, the candidates selected by the Region 2 Nominating Committee will continue to serve into 2011. This procedure does require the resignation of current officers so that they may be reappointed by the AHS Board. At the request of the AHS President, I did provide this "procedural resignation" last week, and somehow the nature of the resignation was discovered by others and subsequently misinterpreted and miscommunicated. It has been an honor to serve as the President of the largest region in the AHS, and I intend to continue on in the office for a final two-year term. Bottom line- you're stuck with me!

REGIONAL PUBLICITY DIRECTOR SEARCH

I have a possible candidate for a new Regional Publicity Director, and I am waiting for them to finish "noodling" on taking over the job from Joyce Hersh. Joyce voiced her intent to move to Florida to be with her extended family (including grandbaby #2 coming this January) and we have been looking for a suitable replacement for her. Hopefully we can fill this position very soon.

REGIONAL NEWSLETTER EDITOR SEARCH

Narda Jones, our award-winning editor will retire at the end of this year as well, and a successor has not been named. Hopefully final decisions can be made in the coming months and the new editor can work with Narda on our winter edition- getting their feet wet and learning from the best in the process.

POPULARITY POLL RESULTS

Our Popularity Poll results are tabulated and are awaiting final approval from the AHS Popularity Poll chair. Once again, I believe the new way of voting and adding cultivars to the list is working! A few cultivars have dropped off our list for 2011, and several were added from write-in votes. Check the AHS website in the coming months for updates and announcements on this topic!

2011 WINTER SYMPOSIUM

The dates for the 2011 Region 2 Winter Symposium are February 25-27 and the location will once again be Blue Ash, Ohio (just outside Cincinnati, Ohio.) Plans are in the works as I write this, and registration forms and agendas will be posted to the regional website before the end of this year. Dan Bachman and JR Blanton are the co-chairs for the event, Mandy McMahon is the auction chair, Kimberly McCutcheon is handling the seedling/introduction slide show, and Diane Pruden is the new registrar. Any questions on the event can be directed to me or any one of those individuals. The speaker line-up is shaping up to be the best ever, so this is a perfect way to chase the winter blues away and get inspired to garden in 2011!

2011 SUMMER MEETING AND GARDEN TOURS

Speaking of 2011, our Region 2 Summer Meeting is hosted by the Southern Michigan Daylily Society and will be headquartered in Troy, Michigan (a northern suburb of Detroit.) The dates of this event are July 15-17. Mark you calendars. Eight tour gardens, many open gardens, an unprecedented boutique, FIVE meals, a massive live auction, unbelievable raffles, superb gift / bus plants, and Jamie Gossard as the keynote speaker make this the event of the year for Region 2. Please plan to attend.

As summer blows away in the autumn breeze, I hope you breathe a sigh of satisfaction in your gardens this year. Don't make your "to-buy" or "to-do" lists for 2011 too big - yet.

Wishing you blue skies and beautiful blooms,

~

Nikki

It couldn't be easier... | AHS Popularity Poll Deadline...

IT COULDN'T BE EASIER TO HAVE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

The deadline for this year's AHS Popularity Poll is in one week. The deadline to cast your ballot is SEPTEMBER 1. You have less than seven days to vote, and it couldn't be easier.

Visit this link and vote. There is nothing to mail, no need to find just the right pen, and no paper ballot to find in that stack of to-do's on your desk.

Just visit the above link and cast YOUR vote for YOUR favorite daylilies.

Our regional publicity director has let us know that only 210 Region 2 members have voted so far. That number is down from last year and is only a small percentage of our membership. She says that our number one selection for "most popular" daylily is a runaway (so far) but the battle for the second through fifth spot is a tight race.

Here are our results from last year:

As a service to its members and to the general public, each year the American Hemerocallis Society (AHS) conducts a popularity poll among its members to determine the favorite daylilies from each region. It is the hope of the AHS that this Popularity Poll presents a true picture of which daylilies perform well in a given area and which are best liked by the membership.

At their Fall 2008 Meeting, the AHS Board of Directors voted to make several changes to the Popularity Poll to improve the quality of the results and to emphasize the regional nature of those results. Each Region will now have its own ballot based on past regional favorites. Each member will still have 10 votes, and up to 5 of these may still be write-ins. Garden Judges in particular are encouraged to use those write-ins to keep the ballot fresh with newer cultivars that have been observed to perform well in their region.

Will you please (pretty please with sugar on it) visit the AHS website here and vote in this year's AHS Popularity Poll?