@pinkruffles
I can only speak from experience ,and my seedling beds are thick with oak leaves, the beds were actually made from mostly oak leaves and grass trimmings. I haul leaves in every year, I have added tons of leaves to the soil in my beds.
I also have oak trees in my own yard which provide a lot of leaves. I never get enough. I often mix pine straw and grass trimmings in with the leaves.
If you have a very wet area the problem with leaves once they decay and basically break down into soil is that they pretty much become a mushy soil, so I have been adding fine pine bark over the past year to improve drainage. Most people will not be growing daylilies in spots as wet as I have, so that will probably not be a problem. Do insects hide in the leaf mulch? Yes, but the mulch provides the plants with a blanket over the soil to protect from cold in the winter and heat in the summer and I consider the trade off worth it. I don't know that the insects in the mulch are not as beneficial as they are pests. I do get aphids, I am treating this year for trips, normally each spring I have to spray for snails and slugs...but not so far this year. I could see the snail and slugs becoming a problem in the mulch is they were not controlled.
