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We are an Official 2016 AHS Display Garden. We welcome visitors, please call or email ahead to make arrangements before your visit.

My husband Merwyn Ripley and I have lived on 10 acres in rural Iowa since 1965. I retired from Iowa State University in 2003, where I was the Office Manager for the Athletic Compliance Department, to spend more time with my passions: family, friends, gardening, hybridizing daylilies, watercolor painting, and photography.

Being an active member of the National Conifer Society, Iowa Regional Lily Society, Ames Garden Club, Iowa Arboretum, Co-hort Member at Iowa State University Reiman Gardens, Master Gardener since 1994, Garden Judge and instructor for the American Hemerocallis Society, and having our garden be an American Hemerocallis Society National Display Garden keeps me busy all year. Walkabout Gardens will also be a new variety display garden for Ball Horticulture Company once again in 2016. I like writing articles on gardening and perennials and have done so for several newspapers, journals, and magazines. Teaching a class on hybridizing in our Walkabout Gardens every July is a joy. I served on the AHS Board as Director of Region One and Chair of the Educational Outreach program from 2010 through 2015.

Each spring I make a new garden area for the daylily seedlings, along with adding many unusual annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees. I love searching for new and different plants to add to the gardens. Approximately 1,500-2,000 daylily seedlings are planted each spring and remain in the garden beds for 4 years for evaluation. The daylily garden is usually refreshed and replanted with new plants during the 4th year.

My hybridizing program was one of the featured articles in the December 2009 "Daylily Journal". To date, I have 38 daylily introductions. We ship from May through October weather permitting. We have a daylily seedling sale in July in the garden (email or call for details).

It's a Beautiful Thing when a Career and a Passion come together.