Daylilies: Great flowers, nothing-special leaves—except for a very few that have reversed their priorities: Great leaves, so-so-flowers. Don't worry about those forgettable flowers: You can have plenty of other things in bloom in daylily season—June and July—anyway. It's the great daylily leaves that are really helpful, and right now at the start of the season, when all your other daylilies are a bore. These "foliage-fab" daylilies, though, are right out there tap-dancing for your benefit, from the moment the plant leafs-out in the Spring.
Take a look at the best of the bunch: "Kwanso Variegata'.
As is usually the case when plants with sword-like leaves "go variegated", they have stripes and strips of color. And do they ever: the white stripes can take up the majority of the leaf area. What a show!
No, I didn't plant this daylily underneath a—well, it's actually an industrial gear, but it's being used here as the base of a birdbath.
"Kwanso" is unusual among daylilies in not being content to stay in a tight clump. It's a daylily that likes to travel, sending out new shoots a foot or even two from the mother ship.
Here's my colony overall.
You can (just) see the under-the-gear newbie is way at the left, on the other side of the bird bath from the mom, who I planted right by the path. And on the other side, here's another "outrigger" clump that surfaced under the nearby mugo pine.
"Kwanso Variegata" is the daylily for whom More is truly More, bigger is better. It's about the size of a normal daylily.
Not only are the leaves often heavily striped, almost white, the leaves are wide too. So there's a lot of foliage in the show.
What a contrast to the more readily available 'Golden Zebra',  which is a dwarf, and slow-growing too.
This clump is older than my Kwansos, for heaven's sake. Nice foliage, mind you, but why not just grow a liriope instead?