How does YOUR garden grow?

14 years ago

I was wondering how you incorporate Daylilies into your garden? Not just the close up shots (which are usually mouthwateringly gorgeous), but where you plant them and with what?

Would it be possible for you to post pics of your beds, or those different spots in the yard that you thought, 'what the heck, I'll just plant it there', kind a thing?

Some of you have mentioned:

- flowerbeds

- mailbox

- roadside

- around the deck?

- near the house?

- how about to hide something? like the top of a well?

I myself have nothing much to contribute as I planted my first bed this year, but I'll dig out my pics after work and post them anyway.

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Comments (13)

marricgardens
14 years ago
Hi mitanoff - I have about a dozen daylilies but right now most are in a seperate area by themselves til I find a better way to display them. I am really looking forward to seeing pictures of what others do with theirs. Thanks for posting this thread. Marg
marricgardens
14 years ago
Hi mitanoff - I have about a dozen daylilies but right now most are in a seperate area by themselves til I find a better way to display them. I am really looking forward to seeing pictures of what others do with theirs. Thanks for posting this thread. Marg
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daylily_dreamer
14 years ago
This picture was taken mainly for the hosta bed but as you can see there is one of my big beds behind it. What do you do with your garden shed? Put daylilies around it!
{{gwi:254963}}
We have a bed in front of our pool fence - that's my garden dog!
mare1
14 years ago
I haven't posted here in a very, very long time, but your beds are so lovely I just had to tell you! What is that taller leafy plant to the left of the yellow mushroom?
daylily_dreamer
14 years ago
Thank you!
That's a toad lily - it doesn't bloom until fall - likes the shade. The blooms are really small about an inch - inch and a half.
The big sum and substance hosta is what started that whole bed. My daughter's boyfriend gave it to me for Mother's Day a few years back.
kimkats
14 years ago
Mine are planted in mixed beds and even in a mixed shrub/perennial bed like this one here.
{{gwi:684052}}

Kim
berrytea4me
14 years ago
In my home garden, my borders are all mixed. I especially love iris & daylilies so there are lots of both growing together with other perennials.

The only area that is totally daylilies is this new bed (picture taken when planting was started. The stone path is now set winding through the bed and it is filled to the hilt now with daylilies). Another new area next to my garage is also 100% daylilies as it is where my 2008 seedlings were planted this spring.

{{gwi:694647}}

For more pictures of my landscape installation and progress visit my members page here where I have several slideshows posted.
mmqchdygg
14 years ago
Debra- those are gorgeous pix! Can you tell me which DL variety is the 2nd-to-last pic- with the bee balm in the background? Beautiful!

Here's some of mine.

{{gwi:493118}} {{gwi:493120}}
berrytea4me
14 years ago
OMGosh, mmqchdygg, I'm envious of your space.

Everyone is posting such beautiful garden beds here.

The daylily with the beebalm is 'Wild Horses' (Trimmer, 1999). It is a favorite here for sure. I have some seedlings coming from it that were planted out this spring so over the next 2 years I'm hoping to see some fun things. Though it doesn't have a huge bud count here, it is eager about sending up so many scapes that it puts on a nice show.
laurelin
14 years ago
I love mixing my daylilies with other perennials, bulbs, and annuals. I learned a lot from my old garden, and I've got 3x as much space in my new yard to work with. Some combinations I'll repeat from the old house, and I'll find new ones too. (Our new home is much farther north, but with more snow cover than our old home - I'll have to figure out how that will affect the daylilies. I might actually be able to grow MORE SEVs here than at the old place.)

Some of my favorite plants to use with daylilies have been:
cannas (the bronze-leaved ones are lovely with yellow/gold/orange daylilies)
irises (siberian and tall and intermediate bearded)
Maltese cross
peonies
echinacea (especially 'White Swan')
perennial mums
Shasta daisies
geraniums (the perennial cransebills, not the pelargoniums)
ornamental grasses (pennisetum alopecuroides is VERY nice)
sedums (taller ones like 'Autumn Joy')

I could go on. I love to mix in some annuals, too. I try to cluster 3-5 daylilies, and then have other perennials to break up the grassy daylily foliage and large flowers. It's a game; I change my plants around every year. Certain shrubs are great backdrops to daylilies, too - I especially like lilacs, and rose of sharon, and mock orange, and butterfly bushes. So little yard, so many plants, lol!
mitanoff
Original Author
14 years ago
Well, I didn't get to posting as quickly as I had hoped. However, for those of you still interested, here are my pics:

The BEFORE picture. Early 2009. Dug it up myself. The only part of this bed that gets over 4hrs sun is to the left of hte obelisk in the picture below. I stuffed it full of daylilies.

Later summer 2009. Big difference. I hadn't realized how much different until I saw these two pics actually.

Just the daylilies. Nothing special. Pandora's box, Happy returns, fragrant treasure, first knight.. . The blooms weren't that great this year, however, wisdom from this forum suggests giving them a few years. . .

Holding bed for assorted dayliles and Ed's unbloomed seedlings that he sent (thx!)
You can't tell but his seedlings (all 8) are in front of the more mature plants. 2/8 seedlings didn't quite make the transplant, unfortunately.
weeper_11
14 years ago
The only place that I plant more than a few daylilies together is the seedling bed, which will be on its first year next year.(Yay for seeds from Coral Kincaid!!:D)

Besides that, I completely prefer daylilies mixed in with perennials and shrubs, rather than in a big bed full of daylilies. I just find that when they are in a perennial/shrub bed, they really shine when they are blooming, and then they become attractive foliage background when they are not in bloom. When they are planted alltogether it is like a big sea of overgrown grass with some blooms popping out of nowhere! Just my opinion.;)

I don't have any pictures(I'll definitely start taking pictures next year!) but I plant daylilies with perennials that either complement/contrast with their flower color, or else that have very different foliage. For instance I usually plant either irises or daylilies in front of my lilies to hide their caterpillar-like bodies! I like daylilies with my roses, intermingled with purple coneflower, contrasting against the dark foliage of my bugbane, with beebalm, euphorbia, taller sedums, catmint...pretty well everything! They also look nice with yarrow and especially salvia and veronica. Often the rich purples, blues, whites, pinks etc. that salvia and veronica come in really compliment a lot of pastel daylilies, or else they really POP against orange or yellow daylilies!

I'm a huge fan about putting complementary, or else contrasting colors near each other...I want it to either be soothing to the eye, or else be showcasing each other by the contrast.

One thing I am fairly persnickity about is how many daylilies I have together of one kind. I know that most people will just buy one of each daylily(I do this too, if the plant is a pricey one. I'm patient enough to wait for divisions.) and then have a huge selection, but I really prefer to narrow down my choices, and have more plants of each selection. I just like the visual impact that 2-3 of the same daylily make, vs. 1 lone plant getting lost amongst everything else. Of course that has big downsides too. Like the whole "narrow down your choices" part. ;)

Beautiful pictures everyone! Lots of great plant combinations. And I see more than one daylily that I wish I had!
running_free
14 years ago
For now I do have one bed that's pretty much all daylilies. (my first and pretty much intended as such) There are two iris plants for spring blooms and there were two hostas but they weren't a sun-tolerant variety so I moved them to a more comfortable place. I added Crocosmia 'Lucifer' last year and was very pleased with the foliage and blooms, considering Crocosmia 'Emily McKenzie' to hang with the daylily pattern of reds and yellows. It's a small bed and I like it as full as possible as long as the blooms don't diminish.

Aside from that I just pop the daylilies in any open spot or as stand-alone varieties with a place all their own. (hopefully some nicer pics this season)

From a landscaper's standpoint I've used them as a centerpiece in small, mounded circular beds surrounded by annuals and short grasses. They have a visual attraction before, during, and after the bloom. I try to incorporate early blooming types of bulbs (dutch Iris/Tulips) and clear the annuals for fall mums. No pics but something easy to experiment with. ( I take pics of things I've done for friends occasionally but even my proudest creations don't belong to me so I never post them to the web)

One of my favorite combos that I haven't grown for myself yet is a back row of tall hollies, with barberry out front, and small rebloomer daylilies out front. I like it alot but I just haven't found the 'right' miniature for my own just yet...actually leaning towards dwarf Asiatic lilies. Someone posted some great photos last fall of (IIRC) Autumn King with a mass of coneflowers that looked fantastic. Something I'd definitely like to try with some early and mid-season blooming daylilies added to the mix. I love sun-tolerant hostas in almost any mix until the blooms clash with my preferred colors. Great with lavanders and purples or near-whites I suppose, haven't tried that? Hmm, now there's a thought...

My garden is relatively new and I think one of the daylilies strongest attributes is flexibility. Be it a color clash or whatever, grab a shovel and swap this one for that you think might be a better specimen for a given space.

If I can find the CD I'll post a pic fo my first-ever daylily bed (at my own home) and the difference in 4 years time. There's a substancial difference! (mind you I don't get paid to pull my weeds and in my downtime I just water, dead-head, and enjoy the blooms, LOL)

~Wes

How does YOUR garden grow?

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marricgardens

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