In the gardening world, daylilies are kind of an old dog. They've been around forever, most everyone knows what they are and they all grow the same varieties. The reason they've been used in landscaping for so long is that they are easy to grow, easy to maintain and easy to enjoy, easy to divide and share, easy to incorporate with other plants, and you get the picture...They are Easy Peasy!
Years ago I used to collect and grow daylilies at my in-laws house. I had over 300 varieties at one point and even did a little bit of breeding work with them for awhile. So much has changed in the Hemerocallis (Latin for daylily) World. Varieties have improved so much that I'm blown away by some of the new stuff that we have available. Case in point, I have a daylily in my yard right now (available in store too!) called Primal Scream. Last year when it was in bloom I counted over 50 open flowers on one plant. The flowers on Primal Scream are about 6 inches and they are an amazingly bright, tropical, screamin' Orange color, so imagine what that looked like in the landscape when 50 of them were blooming at once. Now multiply that by 5 (I have 5 plants) and you'll be blown away.
It's not just Primal Scream, either. I have had Nosferatu in my yard for 3 years now and the flower petals are so thick on it that it's amazing and the purple coloration is so rich. Nosferatu blooms equally as well as my Primal Scream. Don't even get me started on Erin Lea, as I have the one, too, and I'm in love. The incredible ruffling on the bright yellow flowers and soooo many, many blooms on a single plant. I once paid $55.00 for one Primal Scream and you can buy 5 of them for that today. The newer hybrids have huge bud counts (the number of flower buds on each scape (scapes are what holds the flowers up)), fantasic colors, thick flower petals, extended bloom times and season and so much more. Don't buy daylilies at the box store where all you'll find is the same varieties I was growing 20 years ago in my in-laws. There are so many new, better varieties availble today.
Now for the nuts & bolts of daylilies. First off, daylilies prefer to be grown in full sun (>6 hours of direct sun) or part shade (4-6 hours of direct sun). Daylilies can survive several harsh conditions where other plants might struggle. Such as polluted city environments, poor dry soils, right next to concrete or pavement (I have them in my park strips), directly under Black Walnut (very few plants can grow here), or on steep slopes that are hard to water. The majority of daylilies are cold hardy to Zone 3, meaning that my Bear Lake friends can enjoy them too. It's hard to define size because they vary by variety, but most of them fall into 18"-30" tall and 24-36" wide. They are drought tolerant and tolerate poor soils, average soils or fertile soils that are acidic, neutral, or alkaline (like us). They attract butterflies and hummingbirds. They are salt tolerant. My in-laws have deer in the yard all the time and my daylilies never got eaten (unlike my tulips and candytuft). Did I mention that they are E A S Y ?
Daylilies are available right now and the weather is looking great for gardening tomorrow and next week. Buy them online by just clicking right here! Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy.
For now, check out our online store where you can buy enough to fill a pickup truck (or two) and pick them up curbside without even getting out of your car or having to see me, The Garden Moose. Garden Gateway is an Awesome Greenhouse, Garden Center, Plant Nursery and all around general Fun Place that you should totally check out if you're in Cache Valley (Logan) area. **Last paragraph was an aboslutely shameless attempt at stuffing keywords into my blog post so that they get read by search engines! Remember, have a great day. Also, remember...Green side up.