“Designing” with Daylilies
September 21st, 2005 
by Susan Harris
Daylily-lovers should just click off to another site because their love object is about to get dumped on. After years of devotion to these guys and the gradual winnowing down of 30 kinds to the best six, it’s still a dud in my garden. Why is that, you ask? Because with blooms lasting only a day each, there are never enough blooms to really have an impact. And just as importantly, because the foliage is ugly. The large ones looks like corn stalks and the small ones, though better, look like ratty liriope. This photo shows a couple of blooms but basically the area between the red-twig dogwood and the spirea looks empty of anything but slovenly old foliage.
With this photo in mind, I was a tad surprised to read today in a book I won’t name that "The foliage of all daylilies is extremely graceful" and again "When massed, it looks particularly graceful." Here’s my reaction: Proof positive that we can’t believe everything we read about plants. Fortunately, when we’ve grown them ourselves and observed them over time, we don’t need to. Seeing is believing.
But back to daylilies, there’s one more thing I’m going to try before I dump them all at next fall’s plant exchange. This summer I visited Fenwick Island, Delaware while they were blooming and saw them used perfectly, to my eyes. Most of the homeowners had used professional landscapers and from the looks of it, excellent ones. What they did was to mass daylilies so tightly they looked like, or actually were, a few very large ones. So they had punch, which is what mine had better have next year after they’re rearranged in bunches, or they’re out of here.
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September 21st, 2005 at 7:35 pm
Susan: I wandered over here because of your book comment (I read Drop City out of your short list; I love Boyle!), but got sidetracked by your lilies. You don’t mention what I think is a drag about daylilies: all the books say they’re “easy-care” plants. But after their day-long blooms fade, they quickly turn to ugly, streaming mush if you don’t deadhead them faithfully. So every day you have to be out there pinching off the dead blooms, or else the spent blooms completely ruin any effect you’ve managed to get.
I mass them very tightly in a hedge shape lining my drive. I get a big impact this way, but the work! It’s hardly worth the hours of deadheading in July.
So I totally sympathize with your ripping them out (my “hedge” is too huge and well-established by now). Life’s too short to dick around with plants that don’t produce the spectacular effect you should get from tight bunching.
September 21st, 2005 at 7:35 pm
Hey! Don’t you be bad-mouthin’ the daylilies. I’ll take your discards.
September 22nd, 2005 at 8:14 am
I like the foliage in the spring and early summer, but it can get messy looking in the late summer.
I saw daylilies massed along a row of flagpoles, alternating pink and yellow flowers. They looked great in bloom. The landscapers planted an ornamental grass behind them. Now the daylily foliage doesn’t look so good, but the grass and its seedheads arc over the lilies and cover the ratty leaves.
Pic of the daylilies in bloom:
http://static.flickr.com/22/27762057_9ef03dbf3b.jpg
September 22nd, 2005 at 7:35 pm
Gasp!! Dissing Daylilies - That’s like dissing apple pie! Henry Mitchell LOVED them, ergo I love them, and mine, while they bloomed - huge red and yellow ones - were really gorgeous. Everything and everybody has ugly times. You should see me in the morning when I wake up (I’m actually not much better by the afternoon).
September 23rd, 2005 at 10:30 am
Hi Susan, I don’t use them anymore. Much to messy for my liking. I love the grass like foliage in the spring but I just use grasses for that now. The grasses like carex look good all year.
May 1st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Is leaving a comment THREE years later allowed??? I admit to a softspot for day lilies. They are also delicious: the closed buds, raw and sliced as a vegetable in salads, or steamed with olive oil/butter, as a side dish: and the tubers when young are nutty and crisp, siced raw or cooked like potatoes. Given your experience I hesitate asking - but are they in full sun? I find they do make wonderful, hot displays of colour if they get a lot of sun.