For years I adored them from afar, convinced their patrician beauty was beyond attainment for lack of skill and the price. Yet I could never resist poring over pictures of their great white or golden or freckled orange trumpets or reading articles on their culture.
Even books. Some authorities made raising lilies appear extremely difficult for amateurs. Others treated it so much like child’s play I knew they were kidding—it couldn’t be that easy.
Mustering courage at last to attempt a few, then a few more, I learned through trial and error that between these opposite views lies the truth—buy first-class bulbs, give them the soil and situation and food they like, and they perform wonderfully.
Start Now with Lilies
One of those “now is the time” pieces started me off. Like the article on page 30, this one said, “Now is the time to plant madonna lilies.” Well, why not? Three at 50¢ apiece wouldn’t bankrupt me, though if they never came up, I’d feel awfully silly.
They came and bloomed in north-facing pockets beside the front steps. Three not-very-tall stalks produced moderate-sized clusters of white chalices, deliciously scented.
The next summer, they bore more and bigger blossoms that were, if possible, sweeter. Finally, in the third year, they made me proud.
My Madonnas Prospered
This was the year we made part of the lower-level backyard into a patio garden. Thinking the madonnas might have offspring to spare for use below, I dug them. To my astonishment, the bulb masses were almost the size of footballs.
Fifty, I counted, separating them for coves about the garden. All came up, but a pair that must have been planted below the favored 2-inch depth almost all blossomed. The succeeding summer, they reached a peak of magnificence unequaled since.
In the meantime, I tried other lilies, choosing kinds the catalogs said were no trouble. Foolproof, some declared, unwisely. Nothing is that.
My first tiger lilies were a puny failure. Later, bulbs of better quality, given a raised bed furnished with rich loamy leaf mold, flowered nicely.
Fiestas, I found, did better in part shade than in full sun and equally well in pots that were kept fairly cool.
The profuse blooms, tiger speckled, vary from amber to cinnabar. This lily multiplies like mad and needs frequent division.
Bellingham Hybrids
Bellingham hybrids, bought soon after the garden remodeling, shot up splendidly in a southwest fence corner.
Numerous buds had appeared, some creviced with color, when a brutal hailstorm sneaked in at five one morning. Ruined for that year, they failed to recover the next, all but vanishing.
The remainder, moved to an open corner of the patio, came up weakly the following two springs with no flowers.
Imagine my joy when a sturdy stem appeared this year, crowned with two big red-tipped orange lilies that hung for days and days.
The Auratums Are A Pure Delight
One year, feeling brave, I ordered two bulbs of the exotic LiHum aura-turn platyphyllum, long coveted.
I can’t think why a west yard terrace outside the garden was chosen for these fussy doers or why their holes were not prepared earlier and with more care.
Stuck in late and hurriedly, they did well to bloom at all. The short stems were almost too weak for the recurving heavy white petals, gold-banded and cinnamon-flecked, too lovely to be growing off out of sight.
In desperation, I lifted and potted the pair in flower, packing the roots tenderly with pliable soil and soaking them for hours.
They never turned a hair. Instead, they were a pure delight to smell and look at on the shaded patio.
But the move, or something, hurt them. Left in the pots, one disappeared entirely. The other came up and sat still. A newly purchased bulb, also potted, produced one quite decent blossom despite neglect suffered during our vacation.
I repotted it in friable soil, parked it in a sheltered spot for the winter, ordered another new bulb, and set about making it a friendly home.
A pocket in the garden’s southeast corner, where a lilac beyond the fence casts patches of shade, was excavated ten inches, floored with gravel, and bedded with leafy loam.
A nest of sand received the healthy-looking bulb, and a good soil mix dosed with superphosphate quilted it down. This spring, the potted one was moved to an adjoining chink.
The pair vied with each other in vigorous growth, bud formation, and flower display. I was never sure whether the potted lily excelled or the one in the ground.
Glorious they were. Breathtaking. Who said I couldn’t grow lilies?
I Can Grow Most Lilies
Most of them, at least. Regale’s first performance was unremarkable. This year, three new bulbs were planted near the auratum with similar treatment, made of tall, strong stalks that bore sheaves of ivory trumpets, green-tinged outside, with golden throats, extending stamens and anthers an inch long.
I declared them the most beautiful lilies in the garden but later said the same of auratum.
And of ‘Enchantment,’ in June. There’s a lily. The blaze outshines everything in the vicinity when it lifts broad trusses of up-facing nasturtium-colored bowls.
A happy lily leaves glossy with health, no sulking, no pettish whims.
My Coral Lily Blooms Earliest
The small coral lily, L. tenuifolium, is my reddest and earliest, opening in late May and lasting nicely. L. canadense has made a modest beginning, blossoming sparsely. L. formosanum met with bad luck.
Potted indoors on its December arrival, it sprouted at once and shot ceilingward with such energy that, when April turned mild, I moved it to a protected spot outside.
Here, it is still blasted by a sudden frost. Mourned as dead, it thrust up new stems but bred no flowers. Maybe next year.
Another first this year was L. speciosum rub rum. Applications of fungicide plus nitrogen and superphosphate vanquished a yellowish marbling of the blades. The rose-freckled blooms were marvelous.
Though I’m not as fond of rosy pink as of whites and golds and all tawny tones, its August blooming season after other lilies have folded is appreciated. Now I want the white one, the L. speciosum album.
And I want a pure yellow lily, `Golden Splendor’ I think. Then, I want to try henryi, for another late bloomer. I want more regales, Bellingham, and auratums besides many that I simply don’t have room for!
44659 by Dixie E. Rose