Now I know those aren't at your house Rita. they must be somewhere close by though. They are impressive planted en masse!
Great tip.

Next street over down the block from me. But I can see them from in front of my house if I look down there. They do look great blooming each summer. The rest of the time they are a green carpet that mostly chokes out weeds.

Newyorkrita said:The rest of the time they are a green carpet that mostly chokes out weeds.

Till they go dormant then some poor landscaper gets to clean up all that dead foliage and brown scapes... Have I mentioned that I'm a landscaper?

Well. All daylily foliage goes dormant. Honestly, not much is done to these particular daylilies. The foliage must die come winter and just compost into the ground.

Those are absolutely stunning! Clean up is clean up - whether it's ditch lilies or some other plant - so cleaning up the dormant foliage would not bother me at all. And I think it would be well worth that beautiful display!

Living on a hill, I especially like the idea of using them for erosion control. Thank you so much for sharing this idea

To be honest, big ditchlily patches are actually easy to clean up once fall hits. You can just leave it there and let it compost, but it does so rather slowly as the foliage is pretty tough. Personally, I prefer to clean it all up, but a lot of that is due to me wanting to be able to see any new shoots coming up as early as possible without having to look under/move around. I have to pull these shoots and the rhizomes associated with them to control area I wish to keep them in.

Wow! That is amazing!

My very first daylily was one of those (actually several) and I still have a sweet spot in my heart for Ditch Lilies!

Daylily leaves make great compost! I give mine a "haircut" several times during the growing season and add it to my compost bin! Breaks down nicely with everything thing else I throw in there!

That's a lot of ditch lilies. It makes a great display.

Rob

Great pictures of the ditch lilies, Rita! They look beautiful like that. I just started a row along a fence this year and they are already doing well. It won't be long before they are filled in and I look forward to next years blooms. Not looking forward to trying to control them, but they are worth the fight

Beautiful photos, Rita - and good article! Thanks for the "spot of color" this morning!

Thank you everyone! When I was going thru my pictures looking for illustrations for Daylily Week, I realized that these ditch lilies were perfect.

blue23rose said:Great pictures of the ditch lilies, Rita! They look beautiful like that. I just started a row along a fence this year and they are already doing well. It won't be long before they are filled in and I look forward to next years blooms. Not looking forward to trying to control them, but they are worth the fight

The 'fight' really is not that bad if you keep up with them. Just keep knocking down/pulling out any that try to start growing where they should not. I have seen them put a shoot out a full 2 feet away from the next nearest fan. But they are easy enough to spot and I just dig under em a bit and pull it out, trying to get as much of the rhizome that strayed as possible. If they are in softer ground such as a mulched bed it is even easier as the rhizome seems to like going through the softer mulch layer near the top rather than the more compacted dirt below making it easier to yank out.

My patch of them contains around 100-120 fans and I've never had any trouble keeping them in their place.

I don't think I'll have too much of a problem. My husband has already mowed some of the leaves. If they come out too far he will mow them over! He wants to keep enough space between the fence row and my flower bed to drive his truck through

I only wish my daylilies would be as aggressive as the ditch lilies, then I could afford to buy expensive ones knowing I couldn't kill them!