Comments regarding Oakes Daylilies

Wonderful company! I ordered 10 daylilies last week and they came right away. Their website said I would get one bonus/gift plant probably equal to 20% of my order so I expected one additional lily. Instead I got 2 and not the cheap ones. I was really impressed because they paid attention to the fact I ordered all reds and each a different variety. They sent two bonus lilies - both reds - and different varieties than I had ordered. Outstanding! I also received a hand written thank you note. The website says each is at least 2-3 fans. Mine are 4-5 fans. One is even 6 fans. At planting I was already able to separate and get more plants. I will order again most definitely! Take the plunge and order from Oakes.

Oakes is one of the best places to buy daylilies on-line. The plants are all nice size and all grew well even though I planted in the middle of our hot, humid Georgia summer, not an ideal time for planting but I didn't lose any of them. The order came quickly, was well packaged, the cultivars were nicely marked so I could plant them the same day they arrived after giving them a good soak in water. I'll return often to Oakes since I now know I can buy from them with confidence.

I visited Oakes Daylilies for their Bloom Festival last weekend and was amazed at the beauty of their gardens and the friendliness of the owners, family, and staff. I purchased 7 daylilies while I was at the festival and all had in excess of 4 fans each for a very reasonable price. I should have ordered more while I was there, but I am planning to place an internet order through their website. Definitely a great place to visit and purchase from!

I ordered the 50 random day lily package. The fedex truck showed up about eight days later with 3 large boxes of day lilies.
The plants were about a third larger than I expected and much bigger than the shriveled roots I've gotten from other nurseries. I put the plants in the ground right away. That was 10 days ago. I have blooms on about half the plants. They have not opened yet but I can't wait to see the colors, shapes and sizes. It's like Christmas in the middle of summer! I will absolutely be ordering again. Just as soon as I can dig up some more space.

Plants came fast and were all of very nice size. I am extremely satisfied and will be using this company again!

This was my first order with Oakes, so I kept it small, three varieties and one suggested bonus plant. The plants were delivered promptly, and the first thing that caught my attention was the nice handwritten note by one of the packers. The plants themselves were generously sized, about 6 fans for each variety, and I did get the exact bonus plant I suggested! Such meticulous attention to a small order will guarantee my future business. Now, if only other companies could follow Oakes example!!

I have ordered from Oakes in the past and I have always been pleased. This year, new home and garden, I ordered from another mail order company and from Oakes. To compare would be like comparing a 90 pound weakling to a body builder with a six-pack. The Oakes sent the most healthy looking large plants. I can't wait to see them thrive. The others, it will be years before I see anything if at all. I highly recommend Oakes.

I have waited a year to see how the plants from Oakes did. When they arrive all but one was in excellent condition. But this year they all seem to becoming excellent plants. When the time come to order more daylilies I will look no where else.

Posted on January 17, 2013, updated May 3, 2013
Posted on January 15, 2013, updated January 17, 2013
LUSH Vigorous & Gorgeous plants. I ordered 13 daylilies from this company last year, Jan of 2012. I have say I was thrilled with how fresh they were upon arrival. Well-packed. I was stunned at how HUGE these plants were compared to even the best I have ever recieved by mail.

The ONLY way you can get anything better it to fresh dig a clump out of the ground yourself. GORGEOUS and true to descriptions on their website and catalog.

I live in less than an ideal cold zone 5b central/northern PA. climate and we had a wet, dreary, sloppy spring. These were planted in heavy clay soil, amended with manure and peat moss. They still put on a helluva show their very first summer! I wish I could post some pictures here.

Fabulous company. Easy to navigate and order. Shipped fresh and labeled well. Free plant included.

If only all my mail order experiences were this flawless. I will never order daylilies from anyone else and plan to order again this season and forever! Thank you to Dave's Garden for helping me find them and to Oakes Daylilies!

I ordered 9 Daylilies this year. They came on Sat. and as always looked great. They sent 2 bonus plants with my order, one of them had 6 fans. I have ordered from Oakes for several years now. They have always sent great looking plants that are true to name and healthy. Thank You for great customer service and great Plants!

Why waste your time with anyone else? Oakes' has got to be one of my favorite businesses ever. The daylilies they send you are always huge, healthy, happy, and usually accompanied by a bonus plant or 2. They have fancy expensive daylilies and great cheap ones too! A really easy to use website that is very informative, gorgeous catalogs, great customer service, just all around a great experience and a great company! Have been ordering from them for years and I will be a customer for life!

I have ordered many times from this company. I am always happy with the purchase.

I have been ordering from Oakes for about 5 yrs. The product is superb. Very large clumps of daylilies and very hardy. Each year I order spring and fall. My rating is super-positive.

Posted on November 6, 2012, updated November 14, 2012
I ordered two peonies this fall from Paradise Garden, supplied by Oakes Daylilies. With every order I have made for years now, all purchased through PG and supplied by Oakes Daylilies and I always received large beautiful plants. This time one peony I ordered was a very small, very unhealthy looking Festiva Maxima root that only had two tiny, tiny bud growths for the next growing season. I was shocked and contacted Paradise Garden since this peony was not cheap, and I feel ripped off! No response. Nothing. I won't even bother to contact Oakes Daylilies since they were the ones who grew and sent this plant. I doubt this plant will survive winter let alone grow healthy and I am so angry since I believed their guarantees. I just might post my thoughts on their facebook pages. Now I have to search for another reliable company.

I used the excellent ratings on the Garden Watchdog as a guide and recently placed my first order with Oakes. I was very pleased with the size and health of my plants, and my order was shipped promptly and the plants packaged well. The only problem I had was in deciding which daylilies to order - their web site and catalog made my head spin with all the beautiful colors and varieties.

Ordered from Oakes and received my daylilies quickly. They sent tons of fans of each daylily I ordered. The fans were small but it's because their daylilies are starting to go dormant going into fall. Honestly, it's so much easier to plant small fans than large and they adapt to my climate much better. Thank you Ken!

I ordered 2 daylilies...the next week, a very large box was on my porch. The plants they sent were huge and they included a very large bonus plant. I am very happy with the order and will return for more!

recieved excellent plants

I have been doing business for quite a long time with Oakes and usually have ordered a few daylilies at a time and have been very pleased. Last year I ordered there special of getting 25 plants that are not tagged, but just overstocks. They all did beautifully and were just as large in the bunch sizes as others I had gotten in the past! They also sent me a lot of extra plants!
This year, they are laden with buds and already 7 different ones have started to open and the beds are getting crowded!
Oakes Daylilies have outdone themselves year after year! I will never buy from anyone else!

Posted on March 23, 2012, updated June 7, 2012
Very large divisions - at least 3 fans each - very healthy looking, and a free plant, too in the same color as the rest of my Daylilies, which is very nice and considered of them, and really appreciated.
Can hardly wait to see beautiful blooms later this year.
I don't normally spend as much on my plants, but these were highly recommended (both company and Daylilies), looked amazing in a catalog, and not something that can be easily found in local nurseries.
Just planted them, and look forward to beautiful flowers.

I don't normally take the time to leave reviews but I am so happy with my Oakes order I had to share.

I ordered 14 different varieties of daylily, which I received last month. The box was packed with beautiful, healthy looking bare root clumps, as promised, and the clumps were huge! Plus, I got 3 bonus plants from my wishlist making a total of 17. There were a couple that only had 4 fans, but many had 6-9 fans. I planted them about 3 days after I received them and let mother nature take things from there, and today over half of them are producing multiple scapes. These are my first daylilies, and will certainly not be my last. Oakes will be seeing my business again soon.

Ordered 6 daylillies. Received 8 timely and in good shape - 4-5 fans each all large. Will order again.

The plants are large, yes! They could probably already be divided by the time they arrive, but what wowed me was the variety of daylilies. Well over a hundred different colors and types. Dwarf, giant, spider, ruffled, watermarked, etc.... My new favorite flower might be the daylily.

Posted on October 1, 2010, updated March 17, 2012
This was my first purchase from Oakes Daylilies based on reviews here at Dave's.

Wow! I saw all of the reviews about how big the plants are from Oakes Daylilies, but when mine arrived I was still shocked! The plants are enormous! Actually, each plant is really 4 or 5 plants! MUCH larger and healthier than other mail order daylily stores.

This gardener has just found his favorite daylily site!!
Thanks Oakes!!

Better late than never to tell of my wonderful experiences with Oakes.

All daylilies were at least triple fans and they were quick to bloom. They've always sent bonus plants and I've never had a problem with mislabeling or substitutions.

I highly recommend them.

I received 2 orders from Oakes. All were excellent plants. The second order included the reblooming collection. I took this collection to a second garden in Zone 8 . My primary gardening location is Zone 7. The reblooming collection did not do well in the Zone 8 location. I contacted the company with the names of the 6 daylillies I lost and was promptly sent the new plants. This group has faired better but not nearly as well as my Zone 7 plants. I was very pleased with the customer service and would not hesitate to order from them again.

I AM BLOWN AWAY!! I had never ordered from Oakes before. I decided to order because they promised HUGE multi fan clumps and they have such a LARGE variety of daylilies. Other places give one fan and there's no guarantee that you'll get a single flower in the first year. I ordered nine varieties and received all nine plus an extra HUGE clump OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE ONE THAT I HAD CHOSEN as a FREE GIFT! The order arrived PROMPTLY. I AM BLOWN AWAY TO SAY THE LEAST!!!!!! The least expensive one that I ordered was $5.95 and the most expensive one was $25. For the money you CANNOT BEAT THE OAKES DAYLILIES! I couldn't be more pleased and I can't wait to see the blooms next year. Who would have thought you could get this quality through mail order. THANK YOU SO MUCH OAKES!

Posted on March 21, 2011, updated August 31, 2011
Posted on June 14, 2010, updated March 21, 2011
Normally I wouldn't even consider posting about a purchase until after I've had a chance to see how the plants perform, but I'm quite blown away by my first order from Oakes:

I ordered the "Mixed Daylilies", quantity of 25. They added 5 more of the same for the bonus plants, and yet another 3 for a total of 33 plants. The box was STUFFED with 30 pounds of daylilies (not dirt) -- Oakes appears only to have stopped when they simply couldn't safely get anymore in.

The plants were huge, and the fan count per plant was amazing. I just had to run a tally: 3 fans (count of 3), 4 (11), 5 (6), 6 (7), 7 (2), 8 (2), 10 (2). IOW: they averaged 5.3 fans/plant, and the higher counts were not limited to just the smaller width varieties. VERY GENEROUS. On top of that, all the roots were huge and already loaded with the beginnings of many new fans.

Since I want to know what colors they are before I put them in the ground, I put them into 2 gallon pots -- several of the larger width varieties were really too big even for that large a pot size -- I had to wrap the roots around to get them in. Not that I didn't divide some as well -- in the end I filled up 48 pots, all from an order of 25!

Finally, I want to mention that despite being trucked for 4 days and 2,200+ miles, the plants were in fantastic shape. The plants were still nicely hydrated, yet I couldn't find any bruising or rotting. I don't know if prepping and packing like that is an art or a science, but Oakes sure knows how to do it right!

I'll be buying more!

Posted on January 26, 2011, updated August 9, 2011
After reading such good reviews of this company I decided to place an order. I had the hardest time making a choice because there was so many to choose from. I did purchase a spider(Umbrella Parade) that didn't have any customer comments. I hope it was a good choice. I Can't wait to see it bloom.

I recently purchased some more daylilies from Oaks..as always it was a pleasant experience and my daylilies look wonderful. I'm one of their regular clients..never have bought a daylilie from them that was not in the best of shape...and they always do great in years to come. I so highly recommend this company.

We built our house and garden over an old sandpit in MA and have been planting Oakes daylilies for the past 4 years, mixed orders as well as individual varieties. The plants were healthy and huge (more than 3 fans) when they arrived. We tend to buy them at the end of season - overwinter in the garden - then move them to their permanent spots in the spring. Every one of the 150+ have grown and bloomed and are almost ready to be divided. They are spectacular!

Posted on October 9, 2010, updated July 13, 2011
Posted on October 8, 2010, updated October 9, 2010
I just received two of my three orders in a timely fashion, packaged very well, these are the hugest, healthiest clumps of daylilies I have ever received from any mail order site. So far I am thrilled with Oakes, I will be planting tomorrow and will report back in the spring with growth and bloom info. If the growth and bloom are positive, I will be purchasing more next year when I start my 11th (or is i 12th?) garden which will be mostly daylilies and grasses with some ground cover. I also liked that they have no minimum order requirement.

I ordered 3 or 4 reblooming daylilies about a month ago. The plants were 50 times the size of any I had ordered from QVC. They are still growing, so I haven't seen the blooms yet. I will order more if these are great. I went to their festival yesterday and enjoyed it a lot.

I found Paradise Gardens on the web and read a few reviews on this site. Apparently, they are the same as Oakes Daylilies, as the exact same pictures and prices were the same. I don't know why they have to different sites.

OMG, these daylillies are amazing...all I can say is WOW, talk about an over-the-top buying experience.

Like a box full of funky outer space creatures, they're bursting with huge, thick (!!!) roots, brawny, beefy things that look as if they could survive anywhere. Each clump is just MASSIVE. I feel sort of guilty, since I ordered them only to cover a truly-terrifying-to-mow hillside; these beautiful things belong in the front of my best display garden, since I'm sure those enormous roots will give rise to gorgeous flowers...how could they not???

Will I buy again? DUH...fer sure, dude!

The order, packed well and in good condition, was received promptly 10 days later. They also included a free plant. The plants were large (four fans minimum) and healthy looking. I planted them the next morning and, to my surprise, the following day new sprouts had appeared. Now, one of the plants already has buds. I will order again and would recommend them to others.

I ordered for the first time from this company because I needed a few really nice flowers to put them near the church. And I was not disappointed with what I got. The lilies were huge, I could have divided each of them into two or three plants if I had enough room where to plant them. And they began to grow at once. I also got a bonus plant - just what I wanted to have. I can't wait to see them blooming, then I'll add another review. THANK YOU!

More than one year ago I have orderd 6 daylilies.
It was the first time I spent so much money on bulbs/ryzomes and the reason was that I really wanted daylilies that make a large flower and that they are very tall.
The 6 daylilies arrived promptly and I planted them right away.
I was so excited because they really were growing really well and they started to develop a flower stock.
Well..... all the flowers were about 8"-10" tall and not over 60" like advertised on the catalog.
So I called Oakes Daylilies and they told me that it is normal for the first year that the flowers are so short and that they will reach their full size next year.
Well ... one year after, the daylilies are still 50" shorter than what they advertised.
So I emailed first and they were really slow to answer, finally I decide to call and they told me that they will send me the same plants again.
Well... so they were sending me the same 8" tall dayliles !!
No ... I didn't want that, so I asked for a refund and they wanted me TO DIG THE DAYLILIES AND SHIP THEM BACK TO THEM !!!
So after I spent energy on planting, and waiting and wasting time they want me to spent more energy to dig them up.
I never experienced such a BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE !!!!
So now I am waiting to receive other short daylilies bulbs !! which I probably will give away ... no worth my time to plant the worng plant again !!

NO I WILL NEVER ORDER FROM THEM AGAIN !!

First time I have ever ordered from Oakes Daylilies, what a great experience. My order arrived the last week in May, just as I requested. The plants were of exceptional size and great root structure, the company was kind enough to send me some bonus plants...when I saw the color, I knew that someone had taken the time to see that they matched my current order. Exceptional job, I will be ordering again from this company.

Have for over 38 years ordered multiple varieties of multiple plants from all the top nursery suppliers ........ first order from this company -- NEVER have I received plants like these !! Absolutely perfect, healthy, robust, extra-large and immaculately packed. Plus, on an average-sized order, a bonus plant that was of pricier value, AND more importantly, was obviously selected by someone paying attention to my preferences and needs gleaned from the selections I made in the order itself. These people are northing short of amazing -- if I ever worked for a nursery, I would want it to be Oakes -- their standards are obviously in the stratosphere............