The queens of my garden are showy, elegant, brightly colored, richly scented, and glisten like Dresden china. Each summer, they spend three months in the house as gracious visitors; paparazzi snap photos of them in their festive finery, and since they stand more than six feet tall, everyone looks up to them.
They’re lilies, and they’re floral perfection. With shapely, large, and numerous blossoms and vivid, painterly colors, they top the catalog of aesthetic appeal in the flower garden.
Their statuesque tall stems make them perfect for cutting or for setting the back boundary of a flower bed. Set into showy bouquets, they last longer than any other cut flower—sometimes three weeks, as each blossom bud matures and opens.
Most are delightfully scented, with a sweet redolence that ranges from subtle hints to house-filling resplendence.
“Lilies are one of the truly great garden plants. Their beauty, diversity, extended season of bloom, exquisite fragrance, graceful stature, and reliable disposition reflect the fruits of hundreds of years of selective breeding,” argues the catalog for White Flower Farm, one of the most popular lily bulb sources in America. “Your garden should not be without them.”
A Modest Queen
Despite all that adulation, lilies remain rare in the home garden; I’m the only gardener I know who grows them. I suspect their showy, elegant character leads people to think that they’re difficult, high-maintenance plants. But the opposite is true. Unlike human royalty, the grandest of all garden flowers is undemanding and low-maintenance. The initial investment in growing them is modest—up to $10 for top-notch bulbs and a few hours preparing a worthy bed.
Once they’re established, they‘ll bless your garden, your house, and your life for many years in response to fairly minimal attention. In fact, they’ll propagate themselves and give you more, doubling roughly every three years.
My lily bed measures three by 12 feet, and has reliably produced the most spectacular floral displays in my garden (and on my dining room table) over the five years since I’ve planted it. The 20 original bulbs have multiplied themselves into almost 50, some of which I have given to fellow gardeners.
And in happy contrast to the fancy results, I’ve done little to keep things thus.
I planted good quality bulbs in a bed composed of eight to 12 inches of loose, friable soil with high organic content on a clay-gravel-sand base (the latter being my original, hillside glacial till).
Planting time for lily bulbs is remarkably similar to garlic. If your winter temperatures are unlikely to fall below 10 degrees Fahrenheit, set the bulbs in the ground in October, where they'll establish roots prior to sending up stalks in March. If your climate brings temperatures below 10 but rarely below zero, fall planting works, but hedge your bets with a healthy layer of insulating mulch such as the autumn leaves you just raked up. If you’re in a below-zero zone, set the bulbs in the ground in mid-March or whenever the chance of a really hard freeze is past.
Every summer, I thoroughly soak the bed once every three weeks, from June through Labor Day. Lily bulbs must not dry out, or the plants will sulk and suffer. On the other hand, they can’t sit in water, either, so good drainage is key.
In November, I apply an inch or so of organic mulch—in my case, horse-stall shavings mixed with manure. In March, I clean the ashes from our fireplace and distribute them atop the mulch.
Keep an eye out for slug damage at first emergence in spring and take preventive measures if called for—as with hostas, slugs love tender lily shoots. The fireplace ashes probably help deter the slugs. If it’s a bad spring, I cap the stalk tips with old plastic water bottles for a week or two.
From there, it’s simple: Pull weeds by hand as needed; keep watering, especially in midsummer; and stand back and admire.
What Makes a Lily?
Today’s garden lilies are largely horticultural creations from a half-dozen or so wild lily species, some of which live on in modern backyards as what are called “species lilies,” such as the famous tiger lily. All are members of a genus, Lilium, that has more than 110 species, most of which are found in the Northern Hemisphere and native to temperate climates.
The broader “lily” catalog embraces the family Liliaceae, whose 2,000 species include such famous wildflowers as avalanche and glacier lilies, often found at the edge of retreating snowbanks in spring and early summer, and the Columbia tiger lily (lilium columbianum), whose recurved tangerine petals shine in subalpine woodlands like survey flags.
The name carries such recognizable value that it’s applied to many flowers that aren’t lilies at all. Alstroemerias, callas, daylilies, foxtails, Mariposa lilies—all are attractive and have their fans, but none are actual lilies.
Around the world—especially in Asia—the wild ancestors of today’s beauties have been coaxed by breeders into hundreds of varieties, hybrids, strains, and named types in every color except blue. That’s right, there’s no truly blue true lily; if you can breed one, or a blue rose, or both, you could be the first trillionaire.
But let’s leave the glory to the lilies. All they need from us is good ground, regular water—and admiration. Their recompense is infinite.
Regal Register: 5 Favorite Lily Varieties
Among the three main types of lilies—Asiatic, trumpet, and Oriental—and their many hybrids, there are dozens of standout named horticultural varieties. Some bear a close resemblance to their wild relatives, such as the tiger lily; some have grown far from their wild origins at the hands of plant breeders. All are widely available at online nurseries such as White Flower Farm, The Lily Pad, B&D Lilies, The Lily Garden, and Eden Brothers. You'll find lily bulbs at your local home supply store in the spring, of course, but the quality and selection rarely compare to what’s available online.
Fragrance-free claims abound for Asiatics, but I haven’t found that to be true, and I don’t know why you would want to grow an adulterated version of a flower that nature clearly meant to spread perfume as well as visual gusto. A while back, a commercial nursery went to great trouble to breed a nonfragrant Stargazer analog; it failed for lack of market success, and rightly so.
These are my favorites, in order of bloom time:
Yellow Diamond: A cross between Asiatic and longiflorum lilies, this one is my first bloomer (June 10 or so). It sports the cheery yellow-gold that daffodils bring to earlier spring and has a light but sweet fragrance that reminds me of birch syrup. When mature, the three-foot plants offer up a few healthy stems for bouquets, although not as extravagant as the later-summer trumpets and Oriental lilies.
Pink Perfection: Is this trumpet lily pink, lavender, or light purple? It seems to me that each year is slightly different, a happy occurrence that reminds me that nature is ever-adapting and changing before our eyes. Like almost all trumpet lilies, a healthy bulb in a good spot in a good year can approach seven feet. Believe me, your garden visitors will gawk.
Conca d'Or: This is an orienpet, a cross between trumpet and Oriental types, and this one blends the virtues of both. Tall, robust, and reliable, its ultra-thick stem usually soars past six feet and easily stands up to winds, if you have them. The six- to eight-inch blooms unfold like water lilies and shimmer with ivory-gold hues that are unusually bright for a flower. The scent is penetrating but not overbearing, and bloom time stretches close to four weeks. If there’s a better jaw-dropping dining room table bouquet, I don’t know what it would be.
Stargazer: Introduced by lily hybridizer Leslie Woodriff in 1978, it was the first popular garden variety with upward-facing blossoms—thus the name. Its intense fuchsia petals with ivory tips are as vivid as an artist’s palette.
Casa Blanca: The “white house” is, along with Stargazer, the Lilium mainstay of the floral industry. Its sweet scent, pearly blooms, and amiably outward-facing flowers are familiar to almost anyone who’s ever browsed the bouquet displays at a florist or supermarket. Some years, the last blossoms stretch my lily season into Labor Day.
