A Day of Digging Daylilies

Beautiful day today, very cool, in the 60s and breezy.  Sunny.  Last night the low temperature got down to 37 degrees.

The hydrangeas that I transplanted to the new driveway garden look awful, all wilted and limp as hydrangeas get when they are under stress.  I hope I didn't kill them.  They are well watered, but it has been very sunny and quite breezy, so that stresses them.

I spent all day digging up daylilies.  Just cutting down all the overgrown foliage was difficult, then I dug up as many as I could for Gail to take.  There are multiple clumps in each bucket, so about two dozen daylilies in all, and some can be divided further when she plants them.

I kept just three clumps of the frangrant yellow ones in front of the paperbark maple.

I cleared away most that were crowded under the doublefile viburnum, but there are still three there between the hemlock and viburnum, and they'll get overtaken so they'll have to come out in a year.

I ended up leaving most of the daylilies in Meadow's Edge.  Too hard to get them out right now with everything else so overgrown.  But I cut them back and the garden looks neater.

I'll leave a few under the maple, and then take out more next spring.  They just are not the right plant to weave in and out in a curve through the garden.  Too big, too messy, and they don't do well crowded in with other plants.

For the same effect of a mound of cascading strappy foliage, I really like Carex 'Ice Dancer' much better.  I'll get more of that going throughout the garden.  The carex has no bloom, but the daylilies do not bloom well in early summer when the deer get them, then bloom kind of sporadically in later summer. 

The white stripes on the carex leaves looks bright in shade:

And not as bright in full sun:

Now I just have to get all those buckets of daylilies down to Gail, or have her come up and get them!