I prefer the personal touch myself. People respond to individual enthuasiam. Some slides combined with that can be interesting. Slides can show how to use daylilies with other plants and focus points in a garden.

Penny

My friend and I have been giving Herb Presentations for a little over 3 years now. Also we teach the herb class to some of the Master Gardener programs.

Some people that give programs stand up in front of the room and just click away on the computer showing the different slides (they are using Power Point, I think), and at the same time, they read the pertinent information about each plant.

I find that rather boring. I always enjoy feeling, touching, smelling rather than just seeing. That is why when we give our programs, there are no slides, but lots and lots of live herbs in small containers or freshly cut herbs. While one of us is speaking, the other is passing around the herb(s) that is/are being spoken about.

When we are teaching about basils, we will bring in anywhere from 15 to 20 different basil varieties, and the same thing for mints, thymes, lavenders, alliums, etc. Also we ask for class participation and welcome all kinds of comments and questions. It keeps everyone awake that way.

So, if you can get some of your live daylilies and pass them around, and you can still use slides, I think you would present a more enjoyable program.

The presentations that work best for me are those where the attendees get some hands-on action along with information that is pertinent to them. I did a Daylily presentation and included specific cultivars that do very well in our area (deciduous are best for us), how easy they are to grow, and why. Also covered the many sizes, from the huge ones like Challenger to the drwarfs like Stella. Talked about the fact that there are some 40,000 cultivars, so unless they're loaded with money, not to worry about getting the latest and greatest! We looked at bare-root plants I brought so they could see how thick the roots are, how they store water, and how they can be divided when the right time comes. Throughout this, we looked at some pictures of indivdual cultivars. It went well, and they seemed to like it!

Think about the kinds of questions your MGs will be answering when they volunteer. Most people who call our help line want to know how to grow them in their own yards or what's wrong with the ones they are already growing. General cultural and disease/insect info is the basic stuff new MGs need. To keep the interest of those in the class who already know some basic info, the addition of some technical information such as differences between diploids and tetraploids would be helpful along with a little about hybridizing them. And everyone usually appreciates the stories you could tell about your experiences growing them and hunting for that special plant. All gardening junkies are fascinating to those of us who love to garden!

LOL! Apparently the person who asked you to do the presentation knows something about daylilies because he/she realizes that you could easily go through 500 slides in a talk that got into the nitty-gritty on all the different forms, colores, flower shapes & variations of the same.

I just gave a hands on talk about daylilies to a group of Master Gardeners the other week. It was hands on about digging up & dividing dayliies & was, btw, an excellent opportunity for me to be able to give away some of my no names to everyone who attended.

Even though, as I said in my talk, that daylilies are the perfect flower for someone who has OCD tendencies, I wouldn't go into nauseating detail on the subject unless you enjoy seeing your audience's eyes glaze over.

While most of my audience knew what a daylily is & of cvourse knew about Stella, even though that cultivar doesn't do well at all in our area because of the heat, they really didn't know much else. I kept my talk to basic forms - single, double, spiders & unusual forms - how to grow from seeds & what you can & cannot expect, proliferations & clump dividing. I also covered daylily growers in our area & the cultivars that do well down here.

Keep it to 1/2 an hour & leave your audience wanting more.

I saw a daylily presentation about a year ago that was very enjoyable. This lady brought several beautiful blooming plants to the class. She used them to demostrate the different parts of the plant, and to explain the process by which new daylilies are created. She had handouts on how/when/what of growing the Daylilies. Also, the colors and variety in the blooms were just beautiful, and it really was much more interesting than a bunch of slides would have been.

Janie

I can easily send you the presentation that I just finished, including the hand-out and even my 24 slides. It takes about 30 minutes. I started my presentation out by saying telling the group what I wanted them to learn this evening--how easy they were to grow, how easy they were to propragated, and to appreciated each unique flower are an indivigual as to color, edges, shape, dbles, etc and to apply this knowledge to all flowers as per roses, etc. I started with slides that showed what daylilies are not, as in asiatic, oriental, tiger--telling a bit about them and describing their leaves. and hoping for a laugh as I showed my small pond with a 'water lily' and its toy aligator. I taked about hybridizing. Since it was late September I only had 2 plants in flower which I brought, my babies from the same seed pod that were very different-one tall with a spider like flower and one a bit shorter with a a larger flower explaining their parentage and how I will now breed them back. At the end I gave 4 plants for a door prise- two double daylilies and 2 tripple tiger lilies. One thing--with the lights turned down low, no one can see you sweat. LOL...

Lots of good advice has been offered. I have done presentations of from 15 minutes to 7 hours and you need to establish the time allotted. It could be quite a shock to do a 30 minute program and find they expected 2 hours. Al

Some other suggestions:
how daylilies got their name
any folklore or myths associated with them
the fact that they're edible and taste pretty good

Don't make people hold their questions until the end, like some speakers do. Let your audience ask questions as you go along, but be prepared to get off track of your notes and/or slides.

Maybe provide a handout of your main points for people to take home. Don't give them the handout at the beginning of your presentation, or they will be reading and not listening to you.

Give away a few plants as door prizes after you're done with your presentation. It encourages everyone to stick around if they think they'll win a prize.

I see you have already gotten a lot of wonderful advice.

The only thing I have to add is HUMOR!!
Give personal info on how 'sick' you are...to what lengths you have gone to find that one daylily you don't have...how you have gotten down on your knees, crawled through the grass with a flashlight attached to your forehead at midnight, looking for the little monster that has the nerve to nibble on your 'babies'...keep them entertained...given them educational info at the same time.

I gave a speech on Brugmansia and Datura not long ago to a group of MGs. After it was over, I had several people tell me how educational as well as entertaining my presentation was as they all could relate to my 'illness.'

Above all, HAVE A GOOD TIME!!

If you have fun, they will have fun. Sandy