Not all Rudbeckia are "thugs". What about some like R. nitida 'Herbstsonne'? It's nice and tall to go in behind and blooms now.

Also, Eupatorium 'Chocolate' (also not a thug) has tremendous foliage colour at the moment, although it flowers later.

Some Sedums might be a possibility.

If you want an annual, try Verbena bonariensis. You might not find them anymore this year, but they could be stunning in mass. They can grow at least 3-4 feet tall, but have very little foliage and just the sweetest little balls of flowers that seem to float in the air. They love hot, dry conditions and once you have them, they self-seed forever. Once they start blooming, they don't stop until cut down by frost and no deadheading needed. I grow these everywhere, since they take up so little space and mix so nicely with everything.

Kevin

I do love Verbena bonariensis. I have Caryopteris, Echinacea and Perovskia in my sunny border. I also have the non clinging Clematis Juuli which blooms a very long time and Double Red Knockout roses. All intermixed with daylilies. Actually, the daylilies are the most recent additions.

I do appreciate your responses but my priorites are:
-only coming into bloom AFTER d.l.
-taller than d.l.
-small root profile to not impinge on the d.l.tubers

cool, maybe you have great soil so herbstsonne and chocolate are not thugs for you, but here they are THUGS par excellence, the former because it more than doubles in girth every year, and the latter because it seeds itself EVERYWHERE! btw, love both of them.

i was really hoping to find something that would bloom in with, but after, the d.l.; but maybe i'll just have to plant herbstsonne or heliopsis lemon queen behind the d.l.

does anyone know if sidalcea, crocosmia or cosmos bloom AFTER d.l.?

thanks much again; this is most challenging.
mindy

Hi Mindy,
The annuals keep going till cut down by frost. A lot of them don't look fantastic until early-mid August. The cosmos esp look fresh and bright till the end. I think you want the old fashioned ones that get 3 feet tall. They are harder to find nowdays.
Too bad Dalias are so much work because you could find some great colors to carry on through the season and there are some really tall ones. They must be staked and I don't think you have time for that.
The old fashioned cleome are at least 5 feet tall: red pink and white. Massed they are quite lovely. Also kind of prickery which keeps dogs and people a polite distance away. If you behave yourself they might even reseed.
I think the verbena and cleome might be quite pretty togehtr.

I've got a long border along the front of the lawn with mixed sun and shade. In the sunny spots I have daffodils blooming in the spring, then old fashioned bearded iris, then daylilies and lilies as my perennials.

Once the foliage from my daffodils dies back and I can remove it, I put out tons of coleus to give me color until frost.

I buy several varieties of attractive coleus when the garden centers first get going and then spend the spring and early summer propagating them so I have plenty of big bushy plants ready to go.

Otherwise I give various annuals with a reputation for non stop blooms a try. In this photo it was profusion zinnias, which definitely bloom their little heads off.

{{gwi:255931}}

billums, are all those photos of YOUR lilies? wow, talk about pristine by-the-book how-they-look in the catalogues. oh myyyy. amazing.

so do you actually grow lilies cheek to jowl w/ your d.l.? or do you keep them separate? If I thought I could grow lilies UNDER the d.l.tubers, I would go for lilies in a heartbeat, but I would think that lilies would require rich rich soil w/ no intrusion from other plants. Do tell plse!if you say it can be done, my next posted questions will be' what lilies bloom at the late end', so i can get them to be the after-daylilies color for that bed.

i guess i better not get too carried away, staying up thinking about what lilies to get, only to be heartbroken when you answer...! to bed, to bed.
thanks much,b,
mindy

I grow lots of perennials and bulbs in and around my daylilies. I grow many spring and early summer bulbs/corms around and between daylily clumps, such as iris reticulata and ipheion (scilla spreads too much), daffodils (miniatures in the front, full size ones in the beds farther away), and large alliums (I find some of the smaller ones spead too much). I also use quite a variety of lilies, asian for spring & orientals for later. The orienpets and trumpets tend to get too tall and seem out of proportion with the dls. I also have the encroaching shade of a mature (old??) garden and use lots of Black Beauty lilies. These tolerate lots of shade and make great towering heads of white & dark burgandy blooms, at least 30 blooms per bulb once established. Both the asian & oriental lilies are a bit weak on spreading when crowded by the dls - the dls (unless especially weak growers) tend to win that battle - but lily bulbs are cheap and I just add a few bulbs every year to the beds. LA hybrids work well among dls, but you need to make space for them to clump (3 bulbs will make a dl size clump in a few years).

For perennials I use Knautia Macedonica & Gaura Whirling Butterflies (watch out however for the pink tone on the white flowers & pink stamens of WB - it doesn't go with everything). In my garden these perennials come into their prime as the dls are diminishing and bloom into late fall. I also include some asters in the bed for even later color. I try to limit the Rudbeckias because they tend to overrun my smaller dls. I use Rozanne geranium around the very strong older dls in the far gardens. They look great with big orange or red dls and positively glow from a distance, also blooming until hard frost. Another good one is Sweet Kate spiderwort, grown primarily in the dl bds for their lime green foliage - these can be cut back hard in July when the dls are at their best - and the new foliage will look great from mid-August until frost.

I also use billums idea of coleus heavily - potting up starts in spring and setting them among the fairly empty dl beds later in the season. Another plant I like is seed grown coreopsis, especially Mahogany and a yellow tipped red one that I forget the name of. I know you said you don't do well with seeds, but I just sprinkle these on the top of various small empty pots in spring, watch them grow, thin some out, water when I think of it, and they are ready to go out into the yard about now. Nicotiana seedlings, especially Jasmine elata, white with a wonderful scent in hot summer evenings is a great filler or lime green (which I usually grow from small starts from Select Seeds) work well.

One caveat however: all my lilies were 3 weeks early this year too! So the BBs and other oriental types are finishing as August starts (the trumpets were so early it was ridiculous), instead of starting now and finishing as fall nears (usually fairly early here). So are my mums (beheaded twice), asters, eupatoriums, etc. - so I think I'll go buy some annuals!

Mindy, blooming with late daylilies or after them, how about our native New England or New York asters? Either of those species or a tall cultivar. Big and beautiful and long-blooming. Best in full sun.

And don't laugh, but I love goldenrod in the garden. You see it in English gardens but almost never in the US, maybe because we have so much of it in the wild. I grew it til it got too shady here. There are garden cultivars that are really beautiful and extra-floriferous. Must have full sun.

leslie, you know how things come back to haunt you? well, i'm chuckling because I am finding myself in the same position as other people who don't understand the abbrevs that i use!!! what are LA hybrids and BB?? also you mentioned asiatic lilies as being spring? blooming; you mean june? leslie, have you tried crocosmia in w/ d.l.?

you all are being most helpful.i'm going for big and bold here, so cosmos, cleome, goldenrod, lilies seem to fit the bill visually. (i adore nicotiana but would nicotiana grow if i just sprinkle seed over the d.l. bed?i just am NOT a seed type; wish i were.)

lastly, I just want to make sure that you grok that I really DO plant cheek to jowl, and that you still feel that your recs will not hurt or be hurt by- the d.l.?

best, and thank you all so much; this is very exciting!
mindy

p.s. would someone PLEASE invent a verbena bonariensis that is BLUE?!!!i would then put it everywhere, in a heartbeat.

Caryopteris, Echinacea and Perovskia bloom with and long after my daylilies. In fact the Caryopteris won't start for a couple more weeks or longer. They are taller than my daylilies.

LA hybrid lilies are Longiflorum/Asiatic hybrid lilies and are a fairly new class separate from Orientals and Asiatics. Orienpets are hybrids of Orientals and Trumpets.

For BB I assume Leslie means 'Black Beauty' Oriental lilies since she mentioned them earlier in her post. Mine are just now starting while my daylilies are finishing up. I do have them mixed in the same beds. Daffodils are there for spring too.

LA Hybrids are (I think) longifolium (easter lily type??) & asiatic crosses. Anyway they are usually listed in the catalogs as LA Hybrids. They bloom in mid-June for me. The blooms are somewhat waxy looking with good substance and they are very erect at 3 to 3 & 1/2 foot tall max. The ones I have (I originally bought a mixed pastel 5 pack a half dozen years ago) have spead/clumped very well for me, a single squeezed in bulb here and there among the daylilies now are 20 stemmed clumps. I moved out some of the dls as the lilies expanded.

As for the asiatics some of those start in mid-May for me, some in early June, some a bit later. Most of mine are finishing up by the time the LAs start. BTW, Mid-May IS spring for me since my wet clay isn't even usually workable/walkable until late April, early May. Most of my small bulbs such as daffs, ipheion, scilla, anemone blanda, iris ret, fritillarias, etc., bloom long before I do spring cleanup!

Asiatics seldom do much increasing for me. Whether it is the soil or the bunnies I don't know. I just add more when needed. I know they get eaten more often than any other lily that I grow. I have never had to move a dl because of an asiatic lily.

BB is just shorthand for the Black Beauty Lily. It is sometimes catalogued as an oriental lily, but not always. It's been around for a long long time. Old and extremely reliable - simply punch a hold in the clay with a step/jump on long handled bulb planter & drop in bulb. Of course they do better in good garden soil, but they live and eventually spread in my deeply compacted clay as long as I plant them at the top of the slope. Usually bloom in mid-August for me, but are finishing right now this year. They get 4 to 5 ft tall for me in the semi-shady areas & around 5-6 ft in the mostly shade locations.

Orienpets, oriental & trumpet crosses, bloom after the LAs and before the Trumpets. Some of them get extremely tall, way over my head, and are big sturdy stalks with huge flowers, but they can lean and be hard/heavy to stake. I have a couple that would make good lamppost-like sentinels beside a garden entrance, not really usable in a dl bed.

Yes, I have planted Crocosmia Lucifer (supposedly one of the hardier varieties) in one of my dl beds. I planted about a dozen of them together a couple of feet into a bed of smaller dls along my patio. The foliage was taller, more erect, somewhat pleated looking, lighter (more yellow green?? I think) than the dl foliage. In bloom the stems waved in the wind above these small dl foliage which had a nice effect. I do not know if you would get that effect, or much foliage contrast, if you planted crocosmias with the more usual larger dls. The bright red Lucifers bloomed after all the dls were finished blooming - they would have looked awful blooming with the mostly peachy pinks and creams in that bed.

Anyway, the Lucifers lasted 3 seasons, never returned the 4th year. I switched over to the hardy gladiola, Gladiolus communis subsp. byzantinus (bright pink), using a small stand of them next to the bluer pinks of dl Siloam David Kirchoff, Siloam Merle Kent, and the larger flowered but short Jolyene Nichole. The glads & dls are in front of a large clump of pastel pink cream LA hybrid lilies and about a dozen (faded, but still glowing pinkish tan)Globemaster Allium spheres. Now that's a nice combo when the blooms overlap and even when they all don't.

You mentioned heliopsis lemon queen...speaking of thugs. I started out with a 3" pot and it grew to about 6 ft. by 6 ft in 2 years. Now I'm trying to get rid of it.

leslie, are you THE BULB LADY, or what? aMAAAzing!!
You are so generous to teach us all this.
you must not have the dreaded lily beetle that we have now in Ma. so whenever you're upset about something in the garden, remember that you are lucky in that way at least!

i'm defntly going to be interplanting the later lilies and lucifer now.i'll plan to post photos next summer. and btw, may is spring for us too here in boston.but asiatics don't bloom in may here.

somebody said lily bulbs are cheap?!at $3 @, i've never thought that.

OT- buyorsell, are you involved with stocks? or real est? just curious .........
thanks so much again. you all have been so helpful.

best,
mindy

Hey there Mindy. Yup, those are all my lilies. I have lots of friends on flickr who 'cheat' and go take pictures of other people's plants, but where's the fun in that?

I have grown lilies intermixed very tightly with daylilies and I thought it looked really good, but have learned to give them a bit more room so they compete with each other less.

{{gwi:255932}}
(Lilies, Daylilies, Annual Phlox, Rudbeckia)

This bed gets really good morning to mid-afternoon sun and has since been expanded to be at least twice as deep as it was. Now, I've moved the lilies into the back two feet of the bed and the daylilies, phlox and such start about a foot in front of that.

I think the big thing to be careful of with lilies is that lilies really need good drainage and the daylilies aren't nearly as fussy about that.

My late lilies are just finishing up now with just a couple of blooms left on my 'Scheherazade'. I'll echo that I have the best luck with Asiatic lilies and the LA hybrids in general. There is an LA hybrid lily called 'Red Alert' that just multiplies like crazy for me even where it doesn't get a ton of sunlight.

{{gwi:255933}}
(Red Alert in an area of dappled sun)

I'll echo the idea of coreopsis making a good low growing perennial for the front of a mixed bed. I've been dividing my coreopsis 'moonbeam' in the spring and putting it in the front of beds where it keeps blooming all summer. The annual phlox is a bit taller and mingles around with the daylilies and lilies.

billums, i've been looking through all your lily photos; you should be arrested for lily porn!!my heavens.i just can't believe how perfect they all look. no bugs, no shriveled buds, just pristine flowers.
So do tell now, since you MUST be the king of lilies on GW, who are your fav lily vendors? Does B and D still exist in port townsend wa.?that's who we used to buy from long long ago.
thanks much,
mindy

For your criteria - later and taller than daylilies, and not too thuggish...

If your bed is already full with daylilies and you want to tuck something between the plants, then the lilies, crocosmia, or possible annuals for next year are probably your only options. For other plants, you need to give everybody a bit of space - not just for the roots, but for the foliage (if your daylily beds are full, the foliage is probably touching, with no empty spaces for more foliage).

A couple of plants that I use among daylilies that meet your criteria
- phlox - it is the star of my garden right now, and takes center stage as the daylilies wind down
- Echinacea - one of the dependable purple ones like magnus that isn't too picky

(FYI - for me, asiatic and LA lilies bloom before daylilies, and they do multiply a fair amount. The others - trumpets, orientals, orienpets do not actively multiply - some bloom with the daylilies, and some after)

Beth
Z5 Northern Michigan

Greetings again Mindy.

I'd say the secret to my success with lilies is compost... Lots and lots of compost. I till in a couple of feet of the stuff when I start a new bed, then I just keep piling a couple of inches on top of my lilies after they die back every year. In my hot climate organic material tends to fade away pretty rapidly so you have to keep up.

Luckily, I've got a source of all the free compost I care to haul not five miles from my house, so all it costs me is a bit of sweat.

I'm a fan of a bargain, so my first big order of lilies was from Brent and Becky's Bulbs during one of their end of season clearance sales when everything dropped down to half price. I would say I got about half of the varieties I grow in that first order.

I've also ordered lilies from Van Bourgondien during their clearance sales. I won't order plants from them anymore after some bad experiences, but I've had good luck with their bulbs.

My latest trick is to drop by the various local Lowes fairly often and see what sorts of plants they have 'lightly killed' and then put on clearance. Even if they have totally killed off a pot of lilies, the bulbs will be fine and will come up the next year. I've scored a lot of lilies, clematis, and other perennials that way.

Now I just need to learn to leave the Oriental lilies alone, (even if they are *really* pretty) cause they just don't do well here. They look good that first year and then they fade away over time.

{{gwi:255934}}

(RIP my dearly departed Oriental Lily 'Tom-Pouce')

The only Oriental that I've had a lot of luck with is 'Golden Stargazer'. That one has really increased in size from year to year. It's even started forming a nice little clump for me so I'll give that one a thumbs up even if you are like me and haven't had good luck with orientals before.

{{gwi:255935}}

beth and billums,
youall continue to be so helpful and I really appreciate that.I am so excited that this bed may become a longer blooming phenomenon now. As we are an arboretum in nature, this is the only bed in the 'retum that does not have some tree cover, and that gets full day of sun. I gave up on lilies so long ago that this is all going to be like discovering them for the first time!

and beth, i am laughing because it would be sooo ironic if echinacea worked there because i love it but spent way too much money trying to grow it over the yrs and finally gave up. i bet you can't imagine that because EVERYBODY has happy echinacea coming out the ying yang... but not me. anyway, it would be too funny if i did try it in this bed.. and it lived!

we did buy a few Blue Silk hibiscus yesterday w/ plans to put them a few places in the back of the bed, against the fence, and keep them lower than the 8' they want to reach.
that's a pretty eye catching mass of big flowers there.

billums, 2 questions: what do you think the results would be of dried manure> compost? and Can you post some photos of your beds in their entirety? or have you included some in the albums? because i couldn't find any...........
your sale buying tips were most helpful and i shall follow them this fall.

thanks to all of you helpful people again,
mindy
www.cottonarboretum.com/

I've never tried manure since I have all that free compost right down the road, but I hear very good things about it. Just be sure that it is well aged so it won't burn the roots of your plants.

I usually don't do a whole lot of wide shots because I'm more of a plant guy than a bed design guy.

My beds tend to grow as I keep looking for a spot to shoehorn in another plant I've come home with. There was never really any overall design plan or thought to a color scheme.

I've started to contemplate moving through the yard and yanking out all the plants, widening the beds, tilling in a foot or two of compost, then putting things back with a bit more forethought. This time with more variety including shrubs, conifers,roses and such.

{{gwi:255936}}

{{gwi:255937}}

Here are two older wide shots of the bed we were discussing. One from each side of the fence that runs down the middle.

man those is some HAPPY plants, that's all I can say!!
Does most of MS. have rich delta soil? I know it's a very big state; just wondering.

if you don't do the whole 'rework the beds entirely' thing, you might really enjoy adding a skirt to the front edge of your border. stachys(non-blooming one) and coreopsis moonbeam and low purple sedums would complement each other and like your conditions i think, all wanting heat and exc. drainage.

best,
mindy
www.cottonarboretum.com/

Those pictures are the 'before' to my recent bed widening project. The plants were competing a bit too much for light once the lilies started to multiply, and the air circulation wasn't good enough to keep powdery mildew off of the phlox.

Now the daylilies are spaced farther out in front of the lilies and phlox. In the very front, I added new layer of amaryllis with low growers like moonbeam and verbena underneath.

The soil here in the Mississippi Delta is known as Mississippi Gumbo Mud, and is unusual enough that engineers from all over come to learn what is involved in building roads and buildings on top of it. It's pretty much pure silt and clay from eons of the Mississippi River flooding. It's about the worst draining stuff you can imagine, but after you rototill in a couple of feet of compost, it's fairly awesome.

billums, just FYI, there is a famous local d.l. business here in Boston area, Seawright Gardens, owned by Bob and Love Seawright, lovely friends, and they are both from MS; she from yazoo city; he from the delta.Both came up here to work in the world of beginning computers, then left and started their d.l. business, maybe 20 yrs ago now.
best,
mindy

We have one area dedicated to our sun lover daylilies.
Interplanted with them are tall sedum, grasses & lilies.

When foliage is cut the others take over to hide the cut leaves. Works well for us int he Midwest.

Hey Mindy. That's interesting.

My Mom's older sister married a Seawright from the delta around Yazoo City. Perhaps my family has married into theirs, although I've never heard them mentioned.

However the heat index has already hit 117 today, so they should be happy they got the heck out of dodge. :oP

billums, you are FUNNY!! i am chuckling for sure. I know bob and love would like to hear about your aunt- what is/was her name? and I'll forward this to them; they are big into geneology.
best,
mindy

Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Clyde. If I'm not mistaken, Uncle Clyde's mother's name was Effie, but she died when I was fairly young. Aunt Bonnie died of lung cancer about a decade ago.

I actually started intensive gardening after her death convinced me to quit smoking and I needed a hobby that would keep my mind and body too busy to think about it.

Most of the landscape here was wall to wall 40 year old holly bushes and yanking those bad boys out of the ground and converting the areas where they were to flower beds was just the ticket. I'm still a nonsmoker today.

just an update. we put in a few hibiscus Blue Silk at the rear of the bed- big mass of bold blue flowers to draw away attention from the yech below.i think i will sprinkle perilla seeds over the front edge of the border as they get tall enough to be a screen in august. i'll also try a small area of lucifer crocosmia next yr.
thanks so much, everyone, for all your thoughts and help.
best,
mindy

Hi Mindy, I have a part sun, dry clay daylily bed here and would second the suggestions of Plox paniculata (esp. Katherine, Shortwood or Robert Poore), buddleia, perovskia, New Eng. Asters (e.g.Alma Potschke, Hella Lacey). My crocosmia Lucifer blooms toward the end of the dl season, NOT after it. I love the oriental lilies, especially Casa Blanca and Stargazer,which are late bloomers, but this bed is too hot and dry for them. Also, I have the dreaded red lily beetle here and they wreck havoc with all lilies, but especially the earlier ones like the asiatics.

judy, remind me- you still live in ontario, yes? and YOU have the lily beetles? that's just HORRID.
my non-specific memory remembers that there are certain parts of the u.s. that don't have them, and for some reason, I thought it was the colder parts, but it must be the south- like that amazing GW lily grower in mississippi, billums. it's odd, I planted, late, asiatics and orientals in containers and none were found by the red devils.my lilies looked as perfect as his and i never dreamed that would happen to me (but what a thrill!!)

since you and a number of others suggested new eng asters, i may try those, but the others are too wispy (I'm looking for big bold punches of color)or are white or pink/red related, which won't work there.
thanks so much,
mindy