About

Shady Rest Gardens is a labor of love for Doris and David Bishop of Cartersville, Georgia. We are both retired educators. In 2015 David retired from 42 years of teaching high school history and social studies. Doris took an earlier retirement from teaching high school history, social studies, and English followed by fifteen years as a school counselor. We are now spending our time nurturing our flowers and spending our two grown children's inheritance on daylilies, fertilizers, soil amendments, mulch, and anything else the daylilies need. Our first grandchild, Brooks, arrived June 29, 2016, grandson #2, Beckham, arrived November 15, 2017, and grandson #3, Jack, arrived November 3, 2022. Brooks and Beckham live locally, and we try to have them come to our house for a few hours each week. They keep us hopping and laughing. It is never too early to indoctrinate grandchildren in growing daylilies. David named a daylily for both Brooks and Beckham in 2019. There will be a daylily named for Jack in the near future.

We have been members of AHS for about 18 years as well as being members of the Northwest Georgia Daylily Society and Cobb County Daylily Society. Both are currently officers in the Northwest Georgia Daylily Society. Both have been active in the AHS Region 5 and retired in December 2021 as region officers. We were honored to receive the AHS Region 5 Service Award at the 2017 National Convention in Norfolk, VA.

Shady Rest Gardens was a tour garden for the 2011, 2014, and 2021 Region 5 Spring Meetings and the 2015 National Convention in Atlanta and was an AHS Display Garden 2009 through 2022.

David has been hybridizing daylilies ever since we started seriously growing daylilies more than 15 years ago and has registered eleven daylilies to date. He has narrowed his focus to diploid small and miniature doubles.

We could have named our Zone 7 garden "Hidden Garden" because the main garden area is located down behind our house in a semi-shaded area. Many trees have been cut down in the past 15 to 20 years, as we continued to expand our daylily "addiction". We had a neighbor to build a small cabin down behind our house in 2005. We named the cabin "The Shady Rest" and began to build our daylily garden around and near the cabin. The terrain is hilly, so we had to make terraced beds for our flowers. Be sure to wear comfortable shoes when you come for a visit. Our garden is spacious and can easily accommodate bus tours, garden clubs, or any group large or small. Email or call to schedule a visit. We have three water features and a man-made flowing creek bed beside the cabin. There are seating areas throughout the garden if you feel the need to take a break. You may be approached by a friendly kitty wanting his/her head petted.

We continue to downsize the number of daylilies that we grow. We now grow more than a thousand LESS daylilies than we did just seven years ago. We are now under 1300 registered daylilies and will continue to downsize but at a slower pace. Some areas have become more shady as the trees have grown, and daylilies have been replaced with hostas and other shade loving plants.


Contact Info

Shady Rest Gardens

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