OK, I know that this plant with the wickedly cool addiction to the color orange is considered invasive. But I love Hemerocallis fulva, the orange daylily.My patch started with a few roots given to me by my friend Ruth who had dug them out of her garden when she lived in Norwich. I plunked them in a few holes across the front of my yard where it meets the road back when my yard was hot and open and nothing but grass.
(I saw this great quote from author Michael Pollan about lawns. He called them gardens under totalitarian rule. Couldn't agree more.)
Over time, I connected these selectively dug holes until I had a long strip across the front of the yard. Every spring, I planted something else in the space—one year hollyhocks, another red bee balm, lupins, yellow loosestrife, sundrops, garden phlox—and the daylilies spread through the space.
Now they're dominant and I try to limit them to that space and nowhere else in my gardens. In the fall, when I cut them to the ground, I always find an abandoned mouse nest among the dying leaves.
They are hardy where I need hardy because of the road salt of winter. So we coexist. They give me orange fireworks in early summer and a wonderful visual break from the road and the rest of my gardens. I give them appreciation and respect.
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