July 10, 2024
Perennial Plant Profile: Daylily (Hemerocallis)
Bright, bold, beautiful blooms! Hemerocallis (Daylily) are some of the most vibrant and varied sunny perennials out there, with an incredible range of colours, combinations, and sizes. With so much selection, it’s no wonder that Daylilies are such a popular choice for garden beds—they can even be used as a lawn substitute in boulevards!
Light: Full Sun
Height: ranges from 10” to 40” (25-100cm)
Spacing: ranges from 12” to 36” (30-90cm)
Bloom Time: May to September, depending on the variety
All in a Day’s Work
The common name “Daylily” is very appropriate for these blooming beauties, as each flower typically lasts just one day on the stem. While this may not make them an ideal option for cut flower arrangements, most varieties also feature very high bud counts. This means that for every faded bloom, there could be 3 or 9 or dozens more waiting their turn to shine!
A Pollinator’s Dream
It may sound strange, but all that high turnover of blooms will work in your favour when it comes to populating your pollinator gardens. Every day, a new bud opens for business to feed our nectar-hungry friends, especially fuzzy bumblebees and stunning hummingbirds. And after they’ve had their fill, they can come back the next day and do it all again with the newest batch of blooms! Hummingbirds are especially habitual when it comes to their food sources, so by finding your daylily patch they’ll know that a secure, dependable meal is just waiting for them in your yard.
A Rainbow of Colours and Then Some!
There’s some debate as to how many different Daylily varieties are out there, ranging from 30,000 to nearly 90,000; any way you count them, that’s a lot of bloomers! If you tried to plant one of each type, you would easily cover a small town without issue. There is a Hemerocallis for nearly every colour, every shade, every bi-colour and even tri-colour combination, and that’s not even getting into all the different petal shapes and textures! Spidery, frilly, ruffled, cupped—there’s a Daylily for everyone!
So Easy to Grow
Most perennials are easy to grow and care for, once they have an established root system, and Daylilies are no exception! As long as they’ve got plenty of bright sunshine (especially those high energy rays that are found from midday to late afternoon) and plenty of water for their first year to drive those roots as far down as possible, they will happily put on a spectacular show every summer. And even when they’re not in bloom, you’ve still got a lovely clump of grass-like green foliage to fill in your garden spaces between flowering times.
Not Just for Beds and Borders
Do you have a boulevard, that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street? More and more gardeners are looking to turn these extra plots of land into beautiful garden spaces, and Hemerocallis are a perfect option for such a project. They are drought tolerant once established; those gorgeous flowers, of course; their grassy foliage provides great coverage and looks lush all season; they can handle heavy clay and sandy soils; they’re even salt tolerant, perfect for tolerating all the snowplows and salting trucks that pass by our homes all winter!
Just a Little Upkeep
Like most flowering plants, Hemerocallis appreciate a good deadheading to keep their mounds clean and to promote new buds. Head out to the garden every few days with a clean pair of secateurs; clip away any faded flowers and cut back empty stems (those with no buds left) as far down as you can manage to keep your Daylily looking fresh and gorgeous. Most varieties will flower for an average of 3 to 6 weeks, though the “Stella D’Oro” Daylily can bloom off-and-on from May all the way through September!
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