If you’re looking for cheerful summer color that thrives in all kinds of situations, daylilies are a must for your landscape. Daylilies are as tough as they are beautiful with a wide variety of colors to choose from in their blooms. Here we take a walk through our collection of reblooming daylilies – for color you can enjoy all summer long.
Continuous Color
Most perennials bloom for just a few weeks, but daylilies are an exception. Daylilies get their common name from the fact that each individual bloom only lasts a day. But each flowering stem contains nearly a dozen buds that open one after the other and keep the color going. Growers classify daylilies into blooming categories based on when they flower in the season – early, middle, or late. But some daylilies are “rebloomers” – also called “ever-bloomers” – and produce their colorful displays from spring well into fall.
Some of the most popular reblooming daylilies include the cultivar ‘Stella de Oro’ and its relatives. The sunny, golden-yellow blooms of ‘Stella de Oro’ are mildly fragrant and appear continuously over grass-like, apple-green foliage from early June until frost. These plants are tough, easy-going, and bright, so they fit beautifully into all kinds of sunny landscapes. A hybrid of ‘Stella de Oro’ called ‘Happy Returns’ features ruffled, slightly fragrant, lemon-yellow blooms.
Another favorite pair of reblooming daylilies are Earlybird Cardinal and Earlybird Oriole. Both feature ruffled “pie crust” edges on their petals and vivid coloring – watermelon red for one and deep orange for the other. And as their name implies, both begin to bloom earlier in the season – around mid-June – and rebloom well into the fall.
But these are just a few favorites from our collection. If you’re looking for something more pinkish in color, try ‘Just Plum Happy.’ Its blooms are a complex shade of mauve-pink and orange with a darker plum-purple eye. And for a bold, crimson statement in your landscape, look for ‘Pardon Me.’ This fragrant daylily begins blooming in June and opens later in the day than other daylilies – giving you a blast of color to enjoy when you get home in the late afternoon. In the Nursery Yard, you’ll find several other daylilies in a range of colors – most of which are rebloomers too.
Pictured above is Hemerocallis × ‘Stella de Oro’.
Dependability
As some people say, it takes a special effort to kill a daylily. A daylily can thrive just about anywhere you put it – sun or light shade, wet or dry – with a style that fits in both formal and informal landscapes. Daylilies look great in lines along the border of a landscape bed or against the foundation of a house. Group several together in a perennial bed featuring other summer bloomers or use them as a low-maintenance ground cover instead of grass on a slope that’s difficult to mow. And because daylilies can tolerate a range of soil moisture levels, they make a great addition for the rain garden too.
Pictured above is Hemerocallis × ‘Stephanie Returns’.
Care Tips
The fact is daylilies are independent, almost indestructible plants that require very little attention at all. Daylilies are famously tolerant of a wide range of environments in sun or shade. They rarely see a bug or a disease either. But if you really want to spoil your daylily and see the most blooms every year, give it a spot in full sun with consistent moisture and healthy, well-draining soil. Another way to ensure great blooming every season is to remove spent blooms before they produce seed.
Daylilies are vigorous growers, but they don’t spread out much. So after a few years, they can begin to crowd themselves out. If your daylily seems to be declining and starts to send up fewer blooms, it may be time to divide it and replant the divisions into new places in your landscape. It’s best to divide daylilies when they’re not in bloom – typically early spring or late fall. Either time is fine, but keep in mind that plants divided in the spring may not bloom during the first summer after they’ve been replanted.
Pictured above is Hemerocallis × ‘Happy Returns’.
Enjoy Summer-Long Color
You’ve probably noticed that daylilies are a popular choice in our Omaha landscapes, and there’s good reason for that. For one, they’re gorgeous. And two, they’re so easy, so reliable, and so adaptable to any challenges our weather and soil can dish out. And for a limited time, our entire collection of daylilies are on sale – now starting at $7.99.
So come stop by the Nursery Yard to browse our full collection, or shop Mulhall’s To-Go for drive-through pickup and find the perfect ones to add summer-long color to your landscape.
Pictured above is Hemerocallis × ‘Pardon Me’.
