Daylilies can be fun pops of color in my yard and they're in their long blooming season now. I am able to get them to bloom fairly easily, and I consider myself lucky because daylilies are not on the salad buffets of the rabbits this year. I've been able to buy a variety of colors and get them all happy in various parts of my yard. Stella d'Oro is the most popular variety that you see landscaping - both commercial and residential and this yellowy -orange variety is easy to start with if you're just getting into gardening. In my yard, the other color varieties seem to take longer to grow (and I mean they are taking 3-4 years to really take off and fill in well, whereas the Stella d'Oro seems to grow HUGE in the same season). Just an observation from my gardening notebooks for your home expectations.
In the past few years I have seen more and more people planting Stella d'Oro variety and saying that they are native to Minnesota and have seen this variety put into "native" categories in a couple of garden centers. Technically, they're not native to Minnesota - daylilies are native to Asia and central Europe. But there's also different types of lilies - Tiger lilies are true lilies and belong to the genus Lilium with a single stem with leaves coming off the stem with the flowers on top that bloom for several days in a row whereas daylilies belong to the genus Hemerocallis with grass-like foliage at the bottom and individual flowers that typically bloom for one day.
I know people LOVE native flowers and sometimes only plant native varieties (everyone's gardening goals are different and each person's garden is a "you do you boo" situation, you gotta make yourself happy) but I'm not one to shy away from different hybrid varieties that are interesting or a different color. Non-native varieties do not have as much pollen or nectar for pollinators so non-native varieties are not the best food sources but I plant enough natives in my yard for a variety of pollinators so I'm not really worried about it.
But back to talking about native and non-native varieties of lilies - the only lilies that are native to Minnesota are spring ephemerals and they are trout lilies - Dwarf trout lily (erythronium propullans), white trout lily (erythronium albidum), and the yellow trout lily (erythronium americanum). I was lucky enough to see a couple of these at the Eloise Butler Wildflowers Gardens located in Theodore Wirth Park earlier this spring if you would like to see them in person.
The varieties that I'm showing in pictures today are non-native daylilies that I've found at random garden centers over the years. I'm usually always attracted to the peach colored varieties and the deep maroon (because go Gophers!). I think maybe I only have two of the yellow-orange varieties left in my yard and I'll happily keep them because they grow so well. I find the ruffled petals so cute!
They like full sun and a good watering 2x per week so I would definitely consider them drought-tolerant (a good dousing with dishwater works well or the water from rinsing greens one or twice per week if it hasn't rained). I have varieties in different areas of my yard - they also thrive in my boulevard and haven't yet died from the salt and brine solutions that the City puts down in the winter for snow removal. Lilies also grow on the 1-2-3 schedule - 1st year they sleep, 2nd year they creep, 3rd year they leap (this tends to be true for lots of perennials, which is why the recommendation to give space when planting holds true). I highly recommend picking up a few daylily varieties for an easy-grow bloomer for your garden. They're so pretty when in bloom.
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