They are daylilies. Quite easy to find in pretty much any garden center but you will probably not find mature plants like the ones in your pics.

Rodney

They are Daylilies. Very easy to find.

Stella d'Oro daylilies.

Get someone to plant them NOW.

Thanks very much, now I can have a more coherent conversation with the landscaping service! Might it be possible to get blooms by July if I have new daylilies planted right away? Wow, that would be sooo wonderful!! (This must be the busy season, hope I can get scheduled asap!)

Great, I feel so much better and I didn't think that would be possible! My parents have been very stressed out about the move and related obligations, and our time to finish up is down to the wire now... I feared this could feel like that last straw -- unfortunately, the small things very much do get sweated in my family! :-\

Good luck : )

Thank you, this really helped, I feel much more positive about it now! :o)

I want to reemphasize the point made earlier that they are 'Stella d' Oro' ... not just any daylily. This one blooms ongoing, which is why it is the number one daylily used in landscaping. (Many other varieties are collected by gardeners.)

Perfect, I'll make sure to be specific! :)

Around here, there are garden centers that will sell large pots of these. Comparatively speaking they are expensive - $20-$30 range. However, they will flower this year, and it sounds like the $$$ would be worth it to you. So ask if that option is available.

That would definitely be worth it to me, I'll ask for sure!

You might post on Facebook to see if any friends or family members have any to get rid of. I just split a TON of them today while helping my cousin landscape and could have given away a wheelbarrow full.

Good idea, tho unfortunately I don't know anyone who lives in that area anymore, and I won't be back there for a couple weeks, so I have to put all my eggs in the landscaping service basket! (Sure hope they can fit this in, and soon!)

Be sure they use fresh soil in case there is any weed killer still present in the garden bed.

Thanks for mentioning that, I'd wondered if residual poison might have been what finally did the daylilies in even after they'd managed to survive the first few weeks. Maybe the heavy rains unearthed it.

I'm really looking forward to making contact with the landscapers this week and starting to get this flower-murdering guilt monkey off my back! ;-)

Supposedly that’s not how roundup works, if that’s what you used. Only leaf contact kills. It has a relatively short half life otherwise. Again supposedly. I still don’t trust anything they say.

Yup, it was Roundup. That's interesting, it took so long before the plants showed a lot of yellow/brown (but they didn't exactly look healthy during that time either so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised). I noticed it and pulled off the dead leaves last Sunday, then left town the next day (no connection between those events lol). Will be a relief to get all this out in the open soon, just hope to have the fix in the works first!

You should have the gardeners check to see if the plants maybe have re-emerged. I've never used roundup, but if it just kills the leaves, then maybe the daylilies will push up new ones? Daylilies are pretty hardy.

If you can't find some locally, take a look at Smokey's Gardens.com

They sell 2 fans for $2.95 which is a very good price for them. I have ordered several lilies from them and they send top quality. Good luck with it.

Glyphosate/Roundup doesn't kill just the leaves. It works through leaf contact -- once it's absorbed into the leaves and shoots, it moves quickly through the plant, down to the root. It can't be washed off or washed away once it's dry, which usually takes 10 to 30 minutes.

Once it's been absorbed into the plant, glyphosate can't be broken down. It moves quickly through the plant and accumulates in its areas of active growth -- the meristematic tissue, which is located in the roots and shoots. Glyphosate inhibits a specific enzyme, EPSP synthase, that plants need to grow. Without the enzyme, plants can't produce other proteins essential to growth, so they start to degrade (yellowing and browning) and die over the course of several days or weeks.

You've gotten enough plant help, but your post reminded me so much of this lovely prose poem, "Someone I Love" by Naomi Shihab Nye, I wanted to share it. It's about when her son cut down her primrose patch. Gardens are so full of our love and work and memory, and are so easily wounded.

http://www.hhhcvolunteers.org/sites/default/files/Someone%20I%20love.%20Naomi%20Shihab%20Nye.jpg

There is no issue with replanting where glyphosate has been applied, especially if it has been more than a week. And Stella D'Oro daylilies are extremely easy to find, often already in bloom, at any plant nursery, box store or even Walmart garden centers. Common, inexpensive and unnaturally popular.

Thank you all so much for the information and tips, this has been most helpful and I'm so glad I posted. (And lalala -- that piece sure does describe exactly how I feared I may have made my mom feel. I'll definitely share it with her too! :) I'm sooo glad that it turned out these flowers that were a mystery to me are actually so common and easy to find.

FIASCO UPDATE: Yesterday morning I called the landscaping service again, but unfortunately it turned out they weren't the company that originally did the work. I asked them if I could email pics and have someone call me to discuss it anyway, and they said yes, so I did and am awaiting a response. However, it kind of seems to me that their specialty area may be more lawns and trees than flowers.

At that point I knew I had to go ahead and tell my mom now, since I would only have been comfortable arranging 'behind her back' for work to be done in her garden if it was the same landscaper she had picked herself originally. (Realistically though, I'm not sure if any company would have agreed to take on a project without touching base with the property owner.)

So, I called my mom, and before describing what I'd done, I first went on and on about how I did a bad thing while trying to do a good thing; and how much I'd wished I could fix it without her ever having to be upset by it; and how I felt so horrible especially since the house needs to be listed soon and the timing is so bad... And after several minutes of that and the terror and apprehension it was probably building in her, I think it may have actually been a relief when I finally got to the point!! She could tell how awful I felt and how much I'd wanted to repair things on my own and spare her, and she pretty much ended up being the one comforting me!

Mom said there are so many stressful things going on right now with the move and house sale prep that the missing daylilies don't matter a whole lot, but I don't buy that, and I do think the more it sinks in and she considers things she'll want it addressed asap. The pics I had were ones she had me take a couple of years ago because she was so happy with how the garden looked, and she framed one for display. And she beams when she says the neighbors across the street always comment on how glad they are to be facing such a pretty yard. Now with the impending house listing, I'm sure that in reality my mom would like more than ever to feel that pride again.

I look forward to getting a status update as to how the daylilies are doing right now -- if by chance they are showing any signs of pulling through. Based on their scrawny, jaundiced appearance when I last saw them, I'd be shocked if they are -- or at least to an extent where they could fill up the corral and bloom normally within weeks. I spoke to my mom in the early evening, and she has mobility problems so couldn't run out for a close look right then, but will soon. I told her that one way or another, I want to fix this!

Anyway, the input here has been very useful and interesting, and I've enjoyed it! I'll update things once we choose a plan of attack! :o)

If your parents have any friends, family, or neighbors who are halfway decent gardeners, pay them $50 for their trouble to 1) pick up however many mature pots of the Stella daylilies you need, and 2) plant them. All you need is one motivated individual with a shovel, and presumably a vehicle to pick up the plants at the garden center : ) .

Alternately, see if there's a local garden club. A member would likely volunteer to do it, but a gift card (to a nice nursery) would be a good thank you.

Ah yes, I've pined for a motivated individual with a shovel! But at this point in their lives, my parents don't have reasonable access to any kind of assistance, which is why they're finally moving to a senior community. Dad's in his 90s, mom in late 80s; all of their good friends are gone; and we have no close local family. I could think up some other possibilities such as a member of their church or the friendly-seeming neighbor across the street, but these wouldn't be people I know myself or have ever contacted before, so I decided against it.

Gardening club is a resourceful idea, I'll run it up the flagpole! :)

Join NextDoor for her area, if you don't already belong. This is exactly the kind of thing you can use it for to find someone to do that kind of work. Someone who has been vetted by her neighbors and highly recommends someone. I hired a college kid one year to do all kinds of things in the garden/yard that way. He posted his real name, I checked him out on Facebook and found he had friends that I knew (children of my friends). He was great. Not everyone there is, but you can kind of tell from the recommendations people make. Ask for references.

Looks like a great site, I'm bookmarking it! :)

spoc: Did you get this resolved yet? If not, where in IL are they? If they are close I could put the word out for some. Unfortunately we finally got all of ours (like 8 million of them) removed and aren't any stragglers popping up anymore or I'd offer mine.

To even approximate the original effect it will be necessary to buy and plant (or carefully dig up somewhere) full sized specimens with flowers on them, and not small divisions. Also I wonder about the early summer seasonal timing for digging and dividing these plants, how well that would work - including what the tops would look like afterward.

Thanks for following up, I've been meaning to do that! And Bonnie, that is such a kind thought, it makes me feel good just to know people like you are out there. :o) (I live in IL, but the disaster site where my folks live is in MI.)

Anyway, I arrived here a couple of weeks ago to help with the final house clearing/move duties, and as I'd feared, by then all signs of life had left the daylilies' poor little bodies:

I knew I wouldn't have much time to spend on the matter but I did call around to local nurseries, and struck out on finding mature stellas. Then that landscaping service I mentioned finally got back to me (after much following up), and someone came out for a look. He said he would seek three stellas mature enough to bloom soon. Originally it had looked to me that there were five or six -- three main spots, but with clusters in at least two of them. However, by that point I'd decided that I'd be satisfied with even mere improvement.

Happily, he found some, which when planted last week were pretty small and weren't showing signs of blooms yet. But here they are now -- quite measly in comparison to their forebears, but better than nothing... He told me to water them for 10-15 minutes per day for two weeks, so I've been doing that with a manual sprinkler. These pics were taken late in the day; when it's earlier the blooms seem to be more open.

My mom has been over at their new apartment for several days and hasn't seen the daylilies since they sprouted a few flowers, but I'm sure she realized by their size when planted that there was no way they would become anywhere near as full as the originals. I hope she won't be disappointed, but she probably won't tell me if she is. And, she has sooo many other things on her mind these days.

Now, if I told you how much I paid for these plantings you'd say I was certifiable. It just didn't feel right to leave the beloved old family house that way, like it would be some kind of omen lol. :-O Wouldn't it be something if after all this, the new homeowners dig the stellas up and do something else with the landscaping!? Maybe I should ask them for a heads-up if I meet them (haven't listed house yet but will very soon); if these things can live in pots I'll insist that my brother put them on his balcony! ;-)

Thanks so much again for all your help and for talking me through this!

Oooh sorry I thought your parents were in IL. Anyway it looks great, your a good daughter!

It is always lovely when someone who asked for advice returns with a follow up. Thanks.

Hi guys, thanks! I'm sooo glad I posted here; I'd created this account back in the early 2000s, don't even recall why now. But it sure was perfect for this, and the input and consideration here are above and beyond! :o)

Here are a couple of better, more 'bloomy' pics from just now -- and hopefully these stellas are just getting started!

We love a story with a happy ending!!!