NEWBERRY — The new monument to South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley in Columbia has five Dawn Staley Daylilies planted around it, thanks to noted daylily specialist Gene Crocker of Newberry.
Since the 1970’s, Crocker has been hybridizing daylilies, a process that cross-pollinates different daylily varieties to create new offspring. Crocker has dozens of registered daylily cultivars with the American Daylily Society. An avid South Carolina women’s basketball fan, Crocker created the new daylily, registered it in the name of Dawn Staley and then worked with Columbia officials to plant the daylily plants around the statue…