Beautiful blooms Betty Byford turns her yard into a celebration of flowers

Story by LISA SAVAGE

Growing up, Betty Byford loved helping her mother in the flower garden. From irises to gladiolus and just about every variety in between, Betty was happiest when she was working with the blooming beauties. “Mama just loved flowers,” Betty says. “None of the other kids liked helping her, but I was hooked.”

Now 77, Betty has an impressive collection of blossoms all her own. Her McMinnville yard is quite a showplace, with thousands of irises, gladiolus, daylilies, buttercups and other flowers welcoming visitors with a splash of color.

Betty grew up in Smithville, and she her husband, Glenn, moved to McMinnville not long after they married in 1967. She brought a few bulbs, some rose bushes and hydrangeas with her to their new home, and added more flowers throughout the years. “I still have a few daylilies I brought from Mama’s place 55 years ago,” she says. She kept potted plants and always surrounded the home with beautiful flowers, but the array of blooms in those early years was nothing like it is now.

For about the past 20 years Betty has especially focused on adding more varieties of colorful flowers to the yard, ordering bulbs from seed catalogs and buying from other growers. On just about every tillable spot on the property, she has planted irises. “I put 3,000 out by the road, and they just kept multiplying,” she says. She planted another variety, and 100 bulbs quickly expanded to 10,000.

Glenn told someone not long ago that he moves his truck to a different spot on their property a few times a day. “He said anything that sits still too long will have a flowerbed around it by the end of the day,” Betty says with a smile. “He’s not lying. Just about everything we have has irises around it.” A few years ago, Glenn plowed the soil for a new vegetable garden spot, and before he could plant his tomatoes, Betty had set out daylilies.

Even though the bulbed flowers are hardy and multiply quickly, Betty takes care when replanting bulbs, washing each one with a bleach and water solution. She has so many different types of flowers — even hard-to-find varieties such as the black beauty iris.

Betty sells bulbs for $1 apiece to anyone who digs them up, and she often just gives them away. On one occasion, a young boy and his mother came for bulbs. He found the black iris amazing, and Betty didn’t have the heart to tell him she doesn’t sell those varieties that are hard to get. “He had dug it up so I let him have it,” she says. “I just love flowers, and I love sharing that beauty with others.”

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