Three Cheers for Daylilies!

I like for my garden to be attractive to people and pollinators, so I always mix flowers and vegetables together as much as possible. I've learned a lot about my flower priorities over the last few years, mainly that I like perennials that are easy to grow, able to handle our extreme North Alabama weather, and colorful. I don't have the energy or talent for fussy flowers when I'm trying to keep the tomatoes alive and it's 100 degrees outside. Luckily I found daylilies, thanks largely to some friends who offered us all we could transplant from their yard. Daylilies are basically the perfect flower, as far as I'm concerned. They come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, they're almost impossible to kill, and they look wonderful in clusters around the kitchen garden.

If you're afraid to start growing flowers because you don't have a "green thumb" and have had bad luck with houseplants, then daylilies are there for you. You can buy very inexpensive ones at your local garden center for less than $5 each. Plant them this spring once they show up at your area's stores and watch them thrive. They spread over time, which means you'll eventually have a robust cluster you can divide after 3-4 years to add to other parts of your garden. Other than that, they won't ask much of you, just a sunny spot in the yard. They're drought tolerant but won't mind a rainy week, either, and they aren't picky about soil types. Just make sure they get enough sun; my only daylily failures last year were in too much shade. The plants survived but did not bloom well, and we've now moved them to a sunnier spot in the new garden.

As I mentioned, I started with a few truck loads of free daylilies from a friend, and if you can get free ones then go for it. They survived and bloomed even when transplanted in the heat of July, and they came back stronger the second year. Most of our freebies were the commonly seen orange blooms sometimes derided as "ditch lilies"; they're all over neighborhoods here in Huntsville through the summer months. I was delighted to have them but soon found out about the breathtaking diversity of daylily varieties and wanted more. (Warning! Daylilies are habit forming and addictive!)

We headed to the local Lowe's and found another popular daylily, the yellow rebloomer Stella d'Oro. This is a solid first daylily if you are buying yours at a chain garden center, where you should get them for under $5 per pot. You will find other varieties as the season progresses; Happy Returns and Purple d'Oro both turn up at stores in our area, as well as a few others. Independent nurseries and garden centers will offer a wider variety; our local favorite is Bennett Nurseries, which stocks a wonderful selection of daylilies and other plants throughout the growing season. Many of the nicer daylilies at independent stores will run about $10 each, but they're worth it because they'll grow and thrive and spread without much fuss, giving you years of color and enjoyment.

Oakes Daylily Festival in Tennessee

Once I had exhausted the options at all of my local, physical stores, I started looking at daylilies online. Behold - a world of glorious daylilies is just a keyboard and a credit card away! Specialty growers can offer hundreds of varieties tailored to meet your specific garden needs. You can get short ones, tall ones, spider blooms, rebloomers, giant blooms, tiny blooms, and all in every color imaginable. My favorite online daylily company is Oakes Daylilies based in Tennessee. They even have an annual daylily festival at their farm, which we attended in 2019. It was really amazing, and we came home with lots of new plants for our garden!

The daylilies have become such a passion for us that we made sure we brought the best of them with us when we moved in October. All of our Oakes daylilies were dug up and moved to the new garden, and I'm eagerly waiting to see them bloom. We've interplanted them with daffodils and tulips for a long season of color, but there's room for more daylilies. We left the freebies and most of the Lowe's purchases at the old house to bloom for new owners, and I hope they'll enjoy them. I already have my eye on some new daylilies for 2020 and some new places to put them!

Learn more about daylilies!
American Meadows
Burpee
Gardener's Path