Growing Daylilies for Long-Lasting, Multi-Purpose Flower Gardens

Daylily flowers come in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes. Gardeners can use daylilies in sunny garden areas, part shade gardens, containers, cottage gardens and perennial flower beds because of the versitile nature of the plants.

Daylily Plants Grow in Multiple Sizes and Colors

Daylilies are available in dwarf forms of only 12 inches and cultivars up to 3 feet tall, giving gardeners a wide variety of size options for daylily flower gardens. Most of the daylily plants form large clumps, generally as wide as they are tall. Some daylilies will spread and naturalize but never in an out-of-control or invasive manner.

Daylily Flowers Bloom for One-Day and Weeks on End

Daylilies get their common name from their bloom pattern – each individual daylily flower lasts just a single day and then is done. However, a well-established daylily plant will bloom for weeks on end. Dividing the daylily plants every three to five years will keep them blooming at their maximum potential.

Caring for Daylily Plants in the Garden

Daylilies tolerate a wide-range of gardening zones from cold zone 3 to zone 9. The evergreen daylilies tolerate the heat and humidity of the southern zones best but most daylily flowers will grow in almost every condition. Daylily flowers are perennials and will last for many years in the garden. While daylilies grow best in moderate, well-drained and consistently watered soil, they tolerate a wide-variety of growing conditions including drought, sandy soil, wind, salt, and other poor gardening conditions.

Colors of Daylily Flowers

Daylily flowers are available in a rainbow multiple of colors. Many people think of daylily flowers as yellow or remember seeing red daylilies as a child, the truth is daylilies flower in many colors both solid and bicolor. Some daylily flowers are striped and some have colorful throats that create a beautiful color effect in the garden.

Daylily hybrizers have been able to produce an astounding array of daylily flower color combinations. Some favorite daylily colors include the following cultivars:

• Pardon Me – bright red daylily with yellow throat
• Happy Return – reblooming lemon yellow daylily
• Daring Dilemma – creamy pink daylily flowers last many hours
• Golden Chimes – yellow daylilies in miniature size
• Lullaby Baby – ice pink daylilies with green throat color

Types of Daylily Flowers

Daylily flowers have a variety of flower forms, flower sizes, and flower colors and patterns. Double daylily flowers have more than six segments. Circular daylily flowers look round in shape because they have overlapping segments. Flared flower forms have petals that arch over backwards while flat flowers don’t arch. Recurved flowers are flared but with rolled edges and ruffled daylily flowers have frilled edges. A spider daylily has long, thin petals.

Combine that with their ability to tolerate so many gardening conditions and daylily flowers in the garden can be used for almost every landscape situation.