Are there reasons why I shouldn't just move the dead foliage from the plant and let it surround the daylily as a spring/summer mulch? My garden is not a neat, manicured one--it's a large bed of mixed bulbs and perennials--like a cottage garden. The only bad thing I could think of is that the foliage would provide even more hiding places for the occasional rabbit or groundhog that makes its home there. But are there other reasons that I haven't thought of that this would be a bad idea? Thanks for your input!!

Interesting question. I have always removed the dead foliage in my seedling beds and my perennial borders. The only place I leave this is in a big area of ditch lily. It has never held it back. Actually, come to think of it, I have a couple of older cultivars planted on a hillside, and they don't get the foliage cleaned off them, and it hasn't seemed to cause them any harm.

I will be interested to see what others have to say

I think it might have been Daniel that posted once, that it was best not to mulch most plants with parts of themselves. I had never thought of that, but once I read it, it seemed to make good sense. The logic behind it being that for example daylilies:
The dead leaves and scapes might contain diseases and pests that would harm daylilies. I don't know of any scientific studies done on that but I now remove all dead leaves and scapes from the garden. I would love more feed back on the subject. Maybe people have mulched with the dead leaves and scapes and had no problems?

I do clean foliage from my favorite daylilies that are planted closer to the house. I have a large bed of older daylilies that I never clean up. Does not bother them at all, they may actually do better than many of my favorites.

I leave the foliage and carry out the scapes because they are slick and could cause a fall in my steep beds.

I clean away the scapes and leaves in the spring every year. Husband carts away the scapes. I just throw the dead leaves in the yard as the robins will use them to make their nests. Whatever they don't cart away gets chopped up with the lawn mower when the grass starts growing to feed our lawn.

I grow most of my daylilies in pots, and those I strip the old foliage off in early spring. The in ground daylilies usually have their foliage stripped away later in the spring. The old foliage provides shelter for rolly polys, slugs (which will definitely eat your daylily flowers if they open the night before) and other undesirable insects. Also, anything surrounding the crown of a daylily (mulch, old leaves etc.) can set up a damp situation that could encourage crown rot. It's just better to be on the safe side and eliminate as much old debris as you can..............Maryl

I used to clean up my leaves & scapes, making sure I got all of them. Then I realized that the leaves were a natural insulation for winter, as well as fertilizer. I just leave the leaves and mulch over them with pine needles. There seems to be no adverse effect after several years of this, and it saves me a bunch of work.

I clean them up as I go since I can't stand looking at the awful brown stuff.

I cleaned out a long bed of daylilies the other day, didn't actually start out to do that but I was looking for proliferations.
As I was pulling out the scapes and checking them for prolifs, I discovered that if I did not thoroughly clean out the dead foliage I could easily overlook scapes that the dead top had broken off but further down there would be a partially green scape with a prolif or two on it. So I ended up cleaning up all the plants, even cleaned out rusty foliage as I went and the plants looked so much better for it.

Mulch it, water it, feed it, and hope it turns back into live daylily foliage next year?

Charley