Anyone use daylilies to border a landscape?

12 years ago

I am in the process of getting some new landscacpe put in my house and it was suggested to use daylillies to border all the way across the front beds. I'm just thinking what this will look like year round? And how high maintenance this would be.

How often do your daylillies actually have blooms? My parents have some and they said they are lucky to get a couple flowers here and there for about a month out the year. I am worried that this is my main border plant so I don't want it looking ugly in the winter (anyone have evergreen variety of daylily?). Or are there certain variety that bloom several months out of the year instead of just infrequently.

Sorry I know this question is long winded. I'm just afraid to put 40 ft of daylilies bordering my beds if its going to be something that requires heavy maintence or looks horrible when dead. An alternative is something like maybe Aztec grass? Any thoughts are appreciated :-)

p.s. I am in Louisiana...Zone 9

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Comments (4)

taurustendency
12 years ago
I

Here in Missouri I see that everyone uses Stella de Oro as border plants. As tired of them as I am, it looks pretty good when in bloom. When not in bloom though, it's just messy blah!

I personally wouldn't use day lilies as border plants unless they were crazy rebloomers. Up here, "going bananas" blooms constantly all summer for us. I don't know about down there though.
Maryl (Okla. Zone 7a)
12 years ago
I'm not familiar with the common name Aztec Grass, but daylilies might make a reasonable front of the border plant, but would require maintenance to pull out the dead/old leaves and scapes if you wanted them to be tidy year round AND if you could find a truly "evergreen" front of the border daylily. Also you might want to check to see if you have daylily rust in your area. Not an issue I'd want to encounter if I had a long border lined with them......... Personally in my front border I use a couple of clumps of Pandora's Box daylilies as accent plants so that when they are out of bloom other things can pick up the slack. There are other landscape type daylilies that bloom profusely (Stella de Oro is the most common of them all), but usually once the mass of bloom is over with in a few weeks or a month at most, they are done making a big splash for the year.......Maryl
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anniegolden
12 years ago
I would not use daylilies as a border.

I lived in northern Louisiana for a while (now in Delaware). I would go with liriope. While in Louisiana I made the mistake of using mondo grass as a border between lawn and flower/shrub beds. It looked wonderful, but then after a few years it backfilled into the flower beds and was just too invasive.

Liriope behaves itself pretty well. The previous year's growth looks kind of ratty by early spring, so it just needs to be mowed once a year when the new growth just starts to emerge. Otherwise, no maintenance. Be sure to select clump type liriope varieties, not ground cover types. (The variegated green/white one is a ground cover and very invasive.)

Google "border liriope". There are some nice images.
Melissa Moore
5 years ago
I Vote Green Liriope too...Stay Evergreen here in Southern Zone 7a.