Neat foliage after bloom?

I'm hoping there's an easy way to keep things looking reasonable as I let my foliage remain for the good of the flowers. This is a new attempt to naturalize a bunch of daffodilish things. They were planted late, and have done surprisingly well, and are still blooming. Unfortunately, the grass (okay, most of it is weeds, but around here, green is "grass") surrounds them, and it looks terrible. What should I be doing next year? Mulch? I'll get in and pull as much as I can, but we know the stuff will return. I have more to plant, and some to move, should I do something like mulch them when planting? I'm new to this, have always just left them where they are, but some are in harm's way, and need to be rehomed....

Mmmmm....so are you 'naturalizing' them in a garden that happens to have weeds and grass uninvited there, or are you trying to get that natural woodland garden look by planting them in the (weedy) lawn?

If you are trying to naturalize the daffs in the lawn, that is not so easy to do if you can't stand the dead foliage hanging around for a while and the grass getting messy around them. If you still want to do this, one idea would be to plant extremely early blooming small daffs (such as 'February Gold' or similar) and then by the time you do your first lawn mow, in April maybe, their greens will be partially spent and ready to be cut off. Even if they aren't completely dormant by then, after six or eight weeks you will still get a pretty good return bloom for next year.

One tip would be to plant your daffs in a bed that has ground cover such as vinca or anemones (or ivy but that is pretty invasive). The ground cover kind of disguises the nasty foliage and allows the daffs to survive for another year.

Most true bulb fanciers would tell you to prepare a regular garden bed for your bulbs. That is, kill off the weeds and grass by one of the tried and true methods (smothering it, or using weed killer, or something equally drastic). Then dig and prepare the beds with compost and other needed nutrients and then plant your bulbs and any other perennials (daylilies are a common partner to daffs since they disguise the fading foliage somewhat) and maintain the bed like a regular flower garden. Takes some work, but you may be happiest with it in the long run....

After doing all that, you can keep the weeds at bay by using bark mulch, (or in some regions try gravel, flat stones, bricks or some such matter, but many people use various ground covers such as the vinca, or lamium, or creeping phlox, anemones, coral bells, daylilies, short bearded iris, etc. to fill in the space and keep the weeds out and have additional bloom with their daffs.

No doubt about it, the dying daff foliage is a nasty conundrum. I have resorted to planting only daffs that have thin leaves and daffs that are on the petite side. Then I chop the foliage of those daffs visible from my windows or from the street after about 6 or 8 weeks and resign myself to losing a few of them each year.

Sorry if this is too much information!

Good luck! t.

Tabasco, thank you for taking the time!!
Yes, it's an "in the lawn" type attempt. It's really the top of the bank that borders the road. I don't mind the foliage so much, it's the hen-bit, onions and sticky willy that have grown up. I did try to get out what was there when I planted, but obviously more was waiting. So, maybe groundcover is the way to go. I'll clear what I can and then overplant with something-to-be-determined. I like the daylily idea very much, but it may not be cost effective. I'll search.
Now that the daffs are in, can I "smother" once they die back, or would that harm them?
I do have irises that i need to move, could I stick them there, as well? Oh, you already answered that (though they're not particularly short, is it still okay?), so that solves two problems.
There's a house here that has things blooming all the time, and I never see anyone actually planting, so I'll go by and take notes of what's there when. That may be the best way to go, and will certainly make me the happiest.
I really appreciate your answering so thouroughly, now I have a direction :)

I'm not a big fan of grass and I love spring bulbs so my approach has been to experiment with different types of groundcovers to see what combinations I can live with while still leaving the bulb foliage alone.

The following combos have very well worked for me:
1) snowdrops in arabis
2) daffodils in bugleweed and alyssum
3) crocus, tulips, hyacinths, muscari in plumbago
4) iris reticulata in heucherella

I also have chionodoxa in mazus which doesn't work as well -- but I'm too distracted by the other blooming parts of my garden in May to worry about the chionodoxa foliage

I'll put together some pics at different times of the year so you can see what I mean

Here's snowdrops in arabis, you'll see the snowdrop foliage is hidden arabis blooms
I usually take a weedwacker to the arabis in late May when the flowers have stopped and after that the only thing I do is water it

Here's the daffodils in bugleweed (ajuga) and alyssum
In my yard the bugleweed doesn't get started until late April and the alyssum self-seeds like a weed (but it's a pretty weed so I'm happy)

Yes, I have a few kinds of bugleweed that I like with the bulbs too! But some of it can get pretty wild and almost become another weed, so the kind of bugleweed one plants is pretty important.

I love your spring border, jxmas. How do you get your alyssum to bloom so early??

catmad, I can't really advise you on whether your underground bulbs will be affected by the smother approach to weed abatement, but you can google about the smothering and see what others experience is. I know some gardeners believe that the smothering kills important microbes in the soil.

tabasco -- I do absolutely nothing to the alyssum. It does what it wants, when it wants to do it. Most of the plants I try seem to take that attitude as well.

For example the 'chocolate chip' bugleweed in the picture absolutely refuses to do well anywhere else, it just shrivels up and dies on me. I had some 'sun disc' daffodils for 3 years that never bloomed, I gave them to my neighbor and they happily bloomed the first year in their new home, and they've increased every year since.

So I don't fight with the plants anymore. I just move them around to see if they find a happy spot, and if they're never happy, I give them away with good wishes.