Daylilies are essential with their hardiness, ease of culture, intensity and size of colorful bloom, and season of bloom that is beyond the initial May and June crush. So it's with excitement as well as some pique that, only in this its third year in the ground, has this one, 'Carolicolossal', finally started into bloom.
But to the positive first: It is in bloom, and aren't they terrific? (OK, isn't it terrific? Maybe someday, one of these years, there will be another blossom, and another. Or even—I'm not afraid to dream big—a few flowers simultaneously.) If I hadn't planted the darned thing in such an important place—at the near-to-the-house start of the central spine of grass that's the center, the runway, of the entire property—I'd be merely pleased to see the flower. But there's a lot riding on Cardiocolossal. It needs to look like it needs such prominence, that it expects it. And each Summer that it wasn't in bloom, yet again, called into question its suitability for grandeur, my judgment in selecting it for the role, or (even more humiliating) my ability to grow something as bullet-proof as a daylily to blooming maturity. So Hallelujah! It's old enough to bloom. I am a competent gardener. And as it produces more and more blossoms as a bigger and bigger colony, it will, literally, grow into its role as Start Of The Runway.
And what a starter it is: Enormous spider flowers up to ten inches across, and with no variation in color tip to heart. The deep trumpet portion of daylily flowers are so often radically different in color from the outer reaches of the petals that, in reverse of the norm where coloristic variety is a plus, here it's homogeneity that's the shocker. And because the runway is full of traffic, of admirers, for more than the single month a normal daylily would be in bloom, Carolicolossal is (supposed to be) a rebloomer, with an entire second crop later in the Summer. It's one thing to be a star when everyone expects your performance, quite another when most people wouldn't have had a clue. But why was the road to floral maturity so long? I've had daylilies bloom two months after being planted, for heaven's sake. Carolicolossal is just revving up in its third year. It's a sunny spot, good soil, plenty of water. no predators. What gives? My only thought is that, as usual in a garden where More is Usually More, there was and is plenty of nearby competition. The variegated helianthus 'Lorraine Sunshine' at the left. (What a gift, completely accidental believe me, that its flowers are exactly the same color.) In back (trust me) is a hardy bush jasmine that is not the usual one, Jasminum nudiflorm. Jasminum fruticans, thank you. Who knows what it does besides grow narrow green leaves (which is why it's hardly noticeable in this picture). It's a jasmine, growing happily in New England. And in front, the low needly mound of Picea abies 'Vermont Gold', which I hope and expect will flow outward and onward as a foot-high gold avalanche three, five, eight feet across, out of the bed and onto the lawn of the runway itself.
It would take quite a daylily to assume the role of Diana Ross by making these three other interesting plants mere Supremes in the process. Carolicolossal, you may yet be up to it. I'm finally hopeful.

I'm the guy who paid $80 apiece for a pair of Hemerocallis 'Red Suspenders', which is a red/yellow bicolored daylily with eleven-inch flowers.
You read right: Eleven inches. (I paid $80 apiece for two of anything named 'Red Suspenders'.) So I can't be criticized as being one of those garden sophisticates for whom Flowers are a bad F-word, but Foliage and Form are good.
And good they are, filling out and brightening up the garden so flowers don't have to do all the work. Here's a dwarf Japanese maple, Acer palmatum 'Red Pygmy'.
Ferny foliage that says purple all season, and a low and starting-to-worry-me-it's-getting-so-wide habit. Fine and dandy in itself. But then with the variegated gooseneck, Lysimachia 'Geisha' pushing up at the front edges?
The yellow and green leaves are humming a jazzy but harmonious tune indeed atop the foreground of the Red Pygmy's tasteful dark ostinato of "ferny-purple-low, ferny-purple-low".
And Geisha has the typical gooseneck flowers, whose nodding soft-white cones are an echo to Red Pygmy's nodding ferny-purple-lowness. Vertical spikes of flowers would be too disruptive.
All in all, a lot going on, all of it riffing together. This plant combination has rhythm as well as harmony, self-evidence as well as second-glance subtlety. Yum!

Lily-of-the-valley is sensational to cut—both foliage and flowers—but it can be a patchy scroffle in the garden. Soil to dry? Too much sun? Who-knows-what bug is hungry? Then the foliage gets brown-edged and chewed-through. And besides, the plant goes dormant in Summer anyway, so even if it does do you the favor of retreating underground, then you're left with a weed-friendly bare patch.
LotV is great for an out-of-the-way spot, where it can be an ankle-biting cutting garden. Or as just a foot or two, here and there, in any garden you need to look at beyond Memorial Day. The plant's sheer persistence even in the less-than-optimal conditions that make it so unattractive, coupled (I guess) with the mooshy-romantic "Lily of The Valley" name, have made the species itself far too popular. Even if it doesn't look quite like you'd hoped, there it is, year after year. And you can still get an adorable bouquet or two from it. Lily of the Valley is one of our most cherished eyesores.
In gardens where you need to look beyond an appealing (to some) name, and bring a frank, clinical, even cynical judgment to bear on if a given plant is really, truly, worth a damn the second after the flowers fade, Lot V doesn't cut the mustard. Unless, that is, you grow this one:
From the moment the leaves spear-up in early Spring, they aren't just the ten-millionth Lily of the Valley leaf in your state. They are striped, and with rhythm and regularity. And, so to speak, a narrative arc: They start from the same spot at the base of the leaf, and merge into the same spot at the tip of the leaf. It's a controlled performance, with none of the wild-man cavorting of striated Solomon's Seal.)
The flowers themselves are (I admit) lovely, but they are a bonus not the only thing worth a damn about the entire plant. My colony is still young—I think this is it's third Spring—and I only sprang for three of them to start with. Controlled performances, with narrative arc too, don't come cheap. And it's already clear that, at least for me, this beautiful show isn't from a plant that has any prowess as a groundcover. Yes, the species can colonize so thickly it's a decent (but not great) grondcover. But striped leaves mean a more modest performance. It must take a lot of energy—and should—to bring narrative arc to each and every leaf. So I'll weed my patch of yellow-striped Lot V, and ponder if there's a tinier-still, but much more effective, groundcover it would consent to cohabit with. I need to respond in kind, and bring to it the controlled performance it's bringing to me. The gauntlet is thrown, or at least tossed. Let the games begin.

In contrast to Striatum, the classic variegated Solomon's seal is discrete and elegant.
Just a thin orderly perimeter of white to each leaf, not the jubilant and vivid markings of Striatum: Stripes, please, and not strident ones either, thank you. And with that double-strand of pearls, I mean flowers, running down the underside of the stem? Elegant indeed.
Not a problem with me: I've got that elegant-and-subtle gene too, and sometimes even let it out to play. And to work: Unlike Striatum, Variegatum is thick-growing. Combine that with its larger, rounder, and overlapping leaves, and diligent outward growth—all the stems face outward, to the ground that will shortly be colonized—and you get an excellent and even large-scale groundcover. Just don't plant it near anything smaller, which the overhanging and overlapping growth will effectively smother.