Heirloom Daylilies

With cottage-garden grace and surprising diversity, antique daylilies are waiting to be rediscovered by modern gardeners. Sample their old-fashioned charms with 4 of our favorites, all different, labeled, and great for your area. (Several possibilities are pictured.) For zones 4a-8b(9aWC).

For more of each variety, order additional samplers. Daylily care.

Red-headed ‘Annette’ is a spunky little World War II daylily with curling, ribbon-like petals and a wide-open heart of pure sunshine. At just 20 inches tall, it’s perfect for small gardens or the front of a perennial border. It’s one of the most enduring legacies of Texan H.M. Russell who at one point was growing more daylilies than anyone else in America. Early-mid summer, zones 4a-8b(10bWC), from Missouri. Chart and care.

Our longest blooming daylily, ‘August Pioneer’ opens its bright, graceful trumpets for up to eight weeks. Its color is something special, too, a softly glowing orange with hints of apricot that blends in harmoniously yet will draw you across the garden. And it multiplies quickly. All in all, it’s a masterpiece from A.B. Stout, the patriarch of daylilies. 34”, mid-late, deciduous, zones 4a-8b(9bWC), from Missouri. Chart and care.

Tall, tall, TALL – with bloom stalks up to 7 feet! – this remarkable daylily may get you and your garden visitors babbling. Up close its spidery, gold and chestnut flowers are nothing special, but when you see them held high against the sky on their strong, slender stalks – often with hummingbirds flitting about – they’re magic. By A.B. Stout, from the wild H. altissima, 5-7’, late blooming, lightly fragrant, deciduous, zones 4a-8b(10aWC), grown by us here in Ann Arbor. Chart, care, and learn more.

Cute as a button, this Texas-bred heirloom combines petals of cool, pale, lemon yellow with lightly ruffled petals of old-rose-to-burgundy brightened by a wide yellow midrib-line. Its extended blooming habit means its profuse flowers stay open longer than most, giving you more time to enjoy them. AHS Award of Merit winner, 28-32”, mid-season, deciduous, zones 4a-8b(10aWC), from Missouri. Chart and care.

It’s back! This great little daylily has a lot of famous friends. Ken Druse first urged us to offer it, Christopher Lloyd called it a “first-rate AGM winner,” and Pamela Harper in Time-Tested Plants writes, “I doubt that any daylily will ever please me more than ‘Corky’.” Its small, wildflowery blooms are shaded with bronze on the outside, and since every wiry stem holds up to 40 buds, they open for a long time. 34”, mid-season, deciduous, zones 5a-8b(10bWC), grown by us here in Ann Arbor. Chart, care, and learn more.

One of the oldest daylilies of all, and very hard to find today, this lightly fragrant beauty is the only daylily I was growing in my front yard – until we dug it up to share with you. (No problem!) It was bred by R. Wallace and Co., importers of some of the first daylilies from China, and praised in the June 1900 Country Life as “a Day Lily of great beauty, vigorous and handsome.” 26-32”, early-mid, deciduous, zones 5a-8a(10aWC), grown by us here in Ann Arbor. Chart and care.

When we asked the experts, this pastel gem topped the list of heirloom daylilies we just had to offer. Its pale, melon-pink color was an exciting advance for the 1950s, and – enhanced by a cool green throat – it’s still exciting and lovely today. Winner of the Stout Medal, it was bred by Edna Spalding of rural Louisiana who grew her seedlings in the vegetable garden and culled the rejects with a kitchen knife. 32”, mid-summer blooming, deciduous, zones 4a-8b(10bWC), from Missouri. Chart and care.

This exuberant daylily is one of our favorite reds. We like its long, pointed petals, its big, bright, star-like center, and that breeder Hooper Connell of Baton Rouge named it for his grandfather. 34-38”, mid-season, evergreen, zones 5a-8b(10bWC), from Missouri. Chart and care.

It’s back! We can’t understand why everyone isn’t growing this great little daylily. It blooms remarkably early – with the first bearded iris of May – and profusely, even in the half-shade of our old grape arbor. Its graceful, star-like flowers are a cheery yellow-orange that’s somewhere between mangoes and California poppies. And it’s one of the oldest survivors from the very dawn of daylily breeding, by school teacher George Yeld. 24-30”, deciduous, zones 4a-8b(9bWC), from Missouri. Chart and care.