Any plant that comes in a rainbow of colours, blooms for weeks on end, and actually seems to thrive on neglect, deserves a place of honour in a city garden

Daylilies have gotten something of a bum rap over the years. The familiar species type – the scrawny “ditch lily” with orange flowers that blooms faithfully each July in fields and abandoned front yards – is often dismissed as a near-weed, the Rodney Dangerfield of garden plants.

But actually, the daylily family – hemerocallis spp., from the Greek “hemera,” day, and “kallos,” beauty, is one of the largest and most varied in the plant kingdom, thanks to extensive hybridizing.

Today you can choose from an almost limitless selection of heights, bloom times and colours from almost pure white to a purple so deep it’s almost black. And giv

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