9 Beautiful Daylily Companion Plants (+Harmful Plants for Daylilies)

Daylilies look great in combination with other perennials. That’s one of the reasons why you should look out for a few daylily companion plants. This article covers the most suitable daylily companion plants for your garden!

Daylily Companion Plants

Daylilies are showy and gorgeous, but they also need a bit of maintenance. They look best when planted with smaller, daintier plants. In this way, they don’t compete for the same nutrients and water.

The following are some good examples of daylily companion plants:

• Perennial geranium
• Creeping phlox
• Iris
• Corsican mint
• Artemisia
• Lavender
• Campanula Ersicifolia
• Sedum spectabile
• Coneflower

Perennial Geranium and Daylily

Perennial geraniums are a great plant for the understory of your daylily bed. They are easy to grow and care for, drought-tolerant, and deer resistant. It will be a good choice if you have a large deer population. These plants come in many colors: pink, red, yellow, white, chartreuse and the list goes on! They bloom from spring through fall so they will provide color all season long.

Creeping Phlox as Daylily Companion Plant

Creeping phlox is a great companion for daylilies, and it’s easy to grow. It’s a low-growing perennial you can use as a border plant or in the foreground of your flower bed. The blooms come in shades of pink, purple and white with yellow centers. This plant will spread by rhizomes to make an excellent ground cover. By doing so, they will also attract butterflies!

Daylily and Iris

Irises are a good companion plant for daylilies. They are also a suitable companion plant for a lot of various daylily varieties. Iris is a good daylily companion plant because it has similar growth habits to daylilies. Their roots will hold the ground and their flowers, the arriving one after the other (the iris blooms first) will delight you all summer long.¹

Corsican Mint and Daylily Companion Planting

Corsican mint is a perennial herb, that is fragrant and attracts bees. So try planting it near your daylilies to help keep the bees coming back for more!

Artemisia and Daylily as Companions

Artemisia is a perennial herb you can find in medicine, food, and as an insect repellent. They perfectly fit as daylily companion plants. There are over 100 different species of artemisia on Earth today. The most common daylily companion plants include wormwood, mugwort, and silver mound.

But be aware! It can be difficult to find high-quality seeds for planting artemisia in your garden. There aren’t many suppliers available on the market today. And even if you do find them, they may not be reliable sources for quality plants at all! Most nurseries will sell small potted plants instead. These will cost more than buying seeds but allow you to transplant them into larger pots or beds.

Lavender and Daylily as Companions

Lavender is a hardy perennial that does well in any type of soil, and it’s also drought-tolerant. The flowers are fragrant and you can use them in cooking. Lavender is a great companion plant for roses, sage, and daylilies.

Want to know more about lavender companion plants and how they destroy your pest problem?

Take a look at: 11 Lavender Companion Plants Destroying the Pest Problem

Daylily Neighbour: Campanula Ersicifolia

Campanula persicifolia is a dwarf variety of campanula. You can grow the plant in containers or in the garden. The flowers are white with a purple center, and they bloom in summer. The plant grows to about 15cm tall and wide. This makes it an excellent choice for small gardens or large patio containers. Make sure you plant them in well-drained soil and given full sun or partial shade.

Sedum spectabile as Daylily Companion Plant

Sedum spectabile is a succulent perennial ground cover that prefers shade and is drought tolerant. You can grow them in sun, but they will be more colorful if grown in the shade. This plant can grow over 6 inches tall, but it remains low to the ground due to its trailing branches. Reaching 10-12 inches wide as usual, this variety also spreads by rhizome instead of seed as most sedums do. Sedum spectabile will attract butterflies as well as bees with its lavender flowers. They bloom from late spring through late summer.

Did you know: The leaves are also edible!²

Daylily and Coneflower

Coneflower is also a good companion plant for daylilies. It’s excellent at attracting butterflies and bees, which will help pollinate your daylilies.

What not to Plant with Daylily

There are certain factors to consider when choosing the best daylily companion plants. First of all, don’t put tall plants to your daylilies. They’ll shade out the flowers and make them weaker, which means you won’t get as many blooms. If you plant a wide plant near a daylily, it will block out light from reaching its leaves. By that, they won’t grow as big or produce as much foliage.

Plants that are too short can also be problematic. If they’re too short, their roots may compete with yours for nutrients in the soil. But, if you have tall companions growing around your daylily, then you might want to consider planting some smaller groundcover plants on top of and between your clumps of bulbs. By doing that, they can provide some cover while allowing sunlight through at ground level. This will be the spot most people will stand when visiting this area during warmer months when most flowers are not yet blooming.

References

1. Riotte, L. (2012). Roses Love Garlic: Companion Planting and Other Secrets of Flowers. Storey Publishing.
2. Ahmed, S., Buckley, S., Stratton, A. E., Asefaha, F., Butler, C., Reynolds, M., & Orians, C. (2017). Sedum groundcover variably enhances performance and phenolic concentrations of perennial culinary herbs in an urban edible green roof. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 41(5), 487-504.