5 Acre Farm Daylillies LLC | Come Dig at our Clump Sale in July!
5 Acre Field Bed Expansions
Employee Gardens
Starting in 2026 our team will be able to have daylilies lined out for orders. We will have a sense of our inventory and will be able to more effectively process orders. We will have space for increase beds. allowing us to have a place to create new clumps to line out for retail, giving us a larger stock of cultivars that are more popular, leaving us less likely to be sold out. Employee Gardens gives us a place for overstock and allows us to have seedlings seperately placed for evaluation. This also allows space for growing fruit, vegetables and grain. Some of which we will carry in our Giftshop. These gardens might not mean much to you, but this space is a game-changer for our staff, who will better be able to meet customer demand thanks to this additional space.
Field Bed Revival
In the past, 5 Acre Farm had over 30 field beds plus several show beds. We are reviving these garden beds to give us more rows of daylilies to explore. We have so many great daylilies to bring into retail and while some of these beds mighty have bare spots in 2026, know that over the next few years we will be pluging in new cultivars and expanding out inventory. Within the next 5 years we estimate having between 1k and 1.5k daylilies as oppose to the 850 plus varieties we have now.
Reorganizing
5 Acre has over 20 retail beds currently and several show beds. We are digging nearly all of out daylilies on the property, (nearly 2k seperate plants) are being moved to different locations. There are a number of reasons for this, but among them is the desire to better organize the field beds.
I am not giving a full breakdown but here is the gist. There will be retrail gardens filled with only daylilies that are 5 Acre Cultivars. We will have Partner beds, themed beds etc. Check us out in 2026 to see these changes. Here is a breakdown example of what is happing to our first 8 field beds.
The first 8 field beds are fenced in with an electric fence and a gate. This gated garden is Retail Gardens 1 and within it are the following beds:
The first 5 Beds are "Choice Beds" meaning that they are beds dedicated to members of 5 Acre Farms and displays the daylilies that means or meant the most to them out of all of the daylilies that are a 5 acre farm cultivar. Here is the breakdown.
5 Acre Farm Cultivars are daylilies that we either hybridized ourselves, introduced on the behalf of a partner [meaning they created it and we had rights to introduce it and registrer it under our names too, making it part of our overall stock of daylilies legally registered as ours.], or are cultivars absorbed [meaning that we bought another nursery and their plants are legally able to be catagorized as belonging to our business but these aren't cultivars we have registered with our name on it.
At 5 Acres this includes those we introduced in a legal contract for Wes Whiteside of Whiteside Farms, ours that we created, as well as any created by Valente before we perchased Valente Farms in Maine.
Valente, Whiteside, Kroemer, Wuersch and Slayton are all hybridizer names attatched to daylily cultivars and do comprise 5 Acre Daylilies.
Retail Gardens 1 will include the following:
Field Bed 1: Rod's Choice
[featuring a new daylily never sold before that Rod hybridized] Many of the daylilies he appreciated most were hybridized by Ron Valente and were Maine themed. Maine was home for Rod and that is what he loved.
Field Bed 2: Jim's Selection
This bed has a lot of daylilies that Jim put a ton of work into and are some of his favorites from our cultivars.
Field Bed 3: Aaron's Pick
This is the one bed that will change the most. I do not have any cultivars out yet that I hybridized. I have just began my hybridizing progoram, so a few of these are just plugins for now. Of course there are ones like Mark's Memory that I favor a lot and that will likely always have a spot in my "Choice Bed" and will be featured at other locations. This bed will have a few different cultivars that are new to the inventory.
Field Bed 4: Ron's Dedication
This bed will feature a lot of the daylilies that meant something to Ron Valente and were named in honor of people and things he cherrished. He will have a memeorial plaque here as well.
Field Bed 5: Wes' Introductions
This will be all 13 cultivars that Whiteside hybridized and that we introduced on his behalf per contract he made with our farm.
FB6-8 will be a mix of 5 acre cultivars. 5 Acre has over 100 cultivars and growing.
Discount Retail Bed(s)
We are adding 2 Discount Beds. This allows us to have a spot to put daylilies that are part of a sale that either we are running this physical business year or to have a blank spot to plug in some for sales when and if we need it. This makes it easier and more localized to launch a sale(s) for customers.
Business Additions - Coming Soon
5 Acre Giftshop
Our giftshop will carry a variety of products. We are creating contracts with a soap vendor, artist and others to expand what we carry. We will carry a few metaphyscial items as well as items for children and adults to garden with, do bird watching, study insects etc.
Petal Pals
In Tennessee I ran a sucessful business breeding and farming beneficial insects. I will be establishing collonies here and will be doing the same thing here in Centeral Illinois. This will be treated as a brand under 5 Acre Farms but will conduct in some ways as a division or section of the business.
Friendship Gardens
Friendship Gardens
This Garden was established years ago but was not open to the public, we are fixing it up and will be opening it to the public as soon as we can, possibly even in 2026. The gardens comprises of several smaller gardens and is in an Eastern Spirituality theme with writing that actually mentions friendship. Eve's Garden and Bird Garden are parts of the Friendship garden. There are tributes to pets we have lost on the farm over the years. Many of our daylilies are named after pets that passed away. These are featured in the Friendship Gardens and we will have business hours posted for the gardens. It is located in the back of the house and has a sun gate and a moon gate to enter the garden. The gardens features a meditation path and will have a devotional area to the goddess Kwan Yin who was buddhist in life and sacrificed herself for her people. She is known as the goddess of mercy and compassion and is a promiment figure in many world religions.
Moonlight Garden
Friendship Gardens
The image above will give some sense of what I am going for. These will be on a timer and will light up at night. All of the flowers and plants will be nocturnal and we will host moth releases where we will introduce hundres of moths being released to increase native populations. This garden will be a hub for doing the moonlight releases. The walkpaths in this garden will be polinator paths. Meaning that there is no grass at all. There is, instead, paths of flagstone or some other stone and in between is growing short night-blooming flowers for polinators. People will have the option to visit the moonlight gardens at night as there will be business hours for when the gardens are open to the public. We won't be present for this so you will just come here, park out of the way and visit the gardens during public open hours. You can come here for moonlight releases (info will be on the site for when those are once we launch the gardens.
Shade Gardens
This Garden has existed on the propety for decades but has not been open to the public. We are opening it to the public soon. It is eassently a fairy garden in the shade and a nice place to come relax and hang out.
Daylight Gardens
This is essentially the same concept as the moonlight gardens but it will focus on daytime polinators. There will be other locations with polinator plants, however, the daylight gardens will be a specific public gardens for daytime polinators akin to the moonlight gardens. Releases of monarch among other insect species that are diurnal will be done from this garden.
Future Programs - Specifics are still in-works
Hybridizing with UU Kids
Jim and Aaron are members of the local Unitarian Universalist church, UUCUC. Aaron is launching a program for the children of the church to hybridize their own cultivar that they have the naming rights to and that will be registered under Slayton-[the child's last name]
There will be coloring activities for the children and educational information on the daylilies and the children will be able to go thru the steps of hybridizing. Photos will be taken for the memories and the children will recieve e-mails with updates on their cultivar and photos taken of their cultivar as well as a physical picture packet of them thru the process as well as of their cultivar if we find one for introduction. The goal is for every child to introduce a daylily, however, unless they do enough crosses and unless the crosses take and actually sustains life, we won't have anything to work with. It is trial and error and so if it fails we can try again. These classes and this project does not cost any money at all. It only requires you to have parents who attend UUCUC.
The initial class is only invoved in you making about 3 to 5 appearances on the farm and then checking in a year or two on the cultivar and how it is doing.
Hybridizing with QUUAC
Jim and Aaron are members of the local Unitarian Universalist church, Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign. At church is a group for queer indviduals known as the Queer Unitarian Universalist and Allies Coalition or QUUAC. Aaron is launching a program for the members of QUUAC to hybridize their own cultivar that they have the naming rights to and that will be registered under Slayton-[the members last name]
There will be coloring activities and educational information on the daylilies and we will be able to go thru the steps of hybridizing. Photos will be taken for the memories and members will recieve e-mails with updates on their cultivar and photos taken of their cultivar as well as a physical picture packet of them thru the process as well as of their cultivar if we find one for introduction. The goal is for everyone to introduce a daylily, however, unless they do enough crosses and unless the crosses take and actually sustains life, we won't have anything to work with. It is trial and error and so if it fails we can try again. These classes and this project does not cost any money at all. It only requires you are a member of QUUAC.
It will likely only invove you coming out to the farm about 5 different days during the summer and maybe once or twice a year or so later for checking the progress of the cultivar.
Hybridizing with Them
Hybridizing with Them
Jim and Aaron are members of the local Unitarian Universalist church, Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign. At church is a group that meets for transgender and gender non-comforming members and their allies. Aaron is launching a program for these members to hybridize their own cultivar that they have the naming rights to and that will be registered under Slayton-[the members last name]
There will be coloring activities and educational information on the daylilies and we will be able to go thru the steps of hybridizing. Photos will be taken for the memories and members will recieve e-mails with updates on their cultivar and photos taken of their cultivar as well as a physical picture packet of them thru the process as well as of their cultivar if we find one for introduction. The goal is for everyone to introduce a daylily, however, unless they do enough crosses and unless the crosses take and actually sustains life, we won't have anything to work with. It is trial and error and so if it fails we can try again. These classes and this project does not cost any money at all. It only requires you are a member of this group at UUCUC.
It will likely only invove you coming out to the farm about 5 different days during the summer and maybe once or twice a year or so later for checking the progress of the cultivar.
UUCUC Charity
Hybridizing with Them
Each year there is an auction and from 2026 forward we will auction off naming rights that will be registered under Slayton or Slayton-Wuersch with the naming rights going to the winner of the auction.
Hybridizing Classes
We are looking into charging for classes to learn how to hybridize and these classes include helping to cultivate a daylily. It will be registered under either Wuersch-[customer last name] or Slayton-[customer last name] depending on who is invovled in the process. The crosses done during the class might not take so there is no gurantee you will have one to register but if any do then we will introduce them this way and you will be able to get a free fan of the plant and it will become part of 5 Acres inventory. We do not know what we are charging for this class but Fridays will be our days that we are doing classes.
Donations
We have invested more than 50k into the business just this year alone between the two of us and so these projects will not be coming any sooner without donations and many of the programs will be canceled once they launch if no one chooses to donate. We want to offer the classes free for the programs and we want to offer visists to the public gardens for free but donations and tips are what pays for these things, so keep that in mind when you find yourself questioning why we have tipping as an option and why we have donation locations for cash around the property.