Garden bloom here at the farm comes in
stages -- first the very early bulbs such as the yellow winter aconite
and
crocus, and the early perennials such as the hellebores. Then the
daffodils,
narcissi, and tulips. Then the lilacs and peonies. Then the first big
flush of roses. Then what? There are weeks and weeks left of summer! Is
an interplanting of annuals the only way to fill this gap?
Because I've never much cared for the yearly planting and later
clearing out of annuals, the
garden for many years looked a bit stingy in the bloom department
between the big rose display and the full blown hollyhock show and the
riotous color of the chrysthanemums and fall leaf color. Of course,
there were
other perennials blooming during this period -- for instance, the
shasta
daisies and goldenrod and the pale blue, daisy-like Aster frikarti which bloom almost
continually during the summer. The
hollyhocks, too,
would be starting their bloom at the bottom of the stems in late June,
early July,
an always-charming sight. And the patches of low-growing Campanula
carpatica (Tussock Bell Flower)
would be peeping through the stems of the repeat blooming roses
and ar
ound the hosta foliage with their clear
blue cup-shaped blooms from the last week in June on through
July. And there would be others -- lamium, love-in-a-mist,
day lilies.
But I felt the
lack of
anything truly spectacular.
A Slow Beginning
Then
I began to plant lilies, some of which I described in last year's
mid-August essay, Lilies in a Utah
Garden. I discovered their bloom more than covered what I'd thought
of as the garden's stingy period. I started off slowly with some
bulbs of L. rubrum, in pink
and white, a few Aurelian hybrids and some L. chalcedonicum, the Turk's cap
lily. Then I decided to plunge into the lily business by bulking up our
holdings here with several hundred, including some of my favorites --
the
tiger lilies.
And believe me, planted in mass, these flowers are
indeed spectacular. And they keep blooming for a long,
long time. The sight of the flowers pictured above in a 25-foot long
bed in the cutting garden constantly cheers me as I sit here at the
computer, since I can see them over the hedge backing a planting of Old
Garden Roses. Also, placed
among perennials and shrubs they fill a border with color while
depending upon the surrounding plants to keep them upright (not
always successfully). At right, for instance, are some turk's cap
lilies
interplanted with
the shrub rose 'Bonica'.
Culture
I did nothing special to prepare beds for these lilies, but the neutral
to alkaline soil here at DragonGoose Farm is deep and, after decades of
organic amendments to the soil, is both well drained, fertile, and
loamy. Though
lilies are not fussy, heavy clay soil or very sandy soil would need
peat moss or ground bark incorporated into it and, though lilies cannot
stand having their feet wet and should therefore not be planted in
water-logged soil, here in the drought-ridden West, the bulbs should be
planted where they would receive a regular ration of water. Lily bulbs,
even after all blooms are spent, continue to grow, and need at least a
minimum of water throughout the growing season. There is little problem
with acid soil here in Utah and, in fact, in most areas of the
Intermountain West, but for those gardeners having to deal with soil of
pH 6.9 or lower, L. candidum
(The Madonna Lily) and Candidum hybrids benefit from the addition of
lime.
The biggest problem I've had with lily survival around here is hoe
annihilation in the spring, especially with new garden help who are
unaware that they're working in beds with lily growth just below the
surface. I can't fault them on this, since I've sliced off many newly
emerging rosettes myself, tramped on them, too, and planted things on
top of them. I've even uprooted a couple with the Mantis tiller. So
through trial and error, mostly error, I've found that the only safe
way to work in beds in which there are lilies planted is to weed by
hand. Even after the stems are up and obvious in the bed, hoeing near
the stems can
injure the roots.
The depths at which lilies should be planted are usually included in
the
instructions attached to the shipment or package of bulbs, and I more
or less follow these
instructions. I always err on the side of shallow as opposed to deep,
however. I'm always afraid of burying them into oblivion. Besides, lily
bulbs have contractile roots that pull the bulbs down to the proper
depth, so I pop them in at a decent depth and depend on nature taking
its course. The
Madonna Lily, in fact, actually needs to be planted no deeper than an
inch or so below the surface. I have none of these lovely lilies so
far, though they're on the list for next year.
Staking
To embark on lily bulb culture is to be faced with the angst-ridden
problem of staking. So far, no staking has been needed in the bed shown
above, a naturalizing mixture of the shorter versions of Asiatics
(early) and Orientals (late), nor another naturalizing mixture of
Asiatics (shown at left) offered by White Flower Farm called
'Strawberries and Cream.'
But the tall varieties with many pendant blooms do require something to
keep them from bending every which way in the garden. I went out this
morning to rescue some of my favorites, L. lancifolium (L. tigrinum), the
Tiger Lilies (see the Tiger Lily 'Citronella, below right). These
lilies grow to five feet or more and shoot up rather straight and
stately until the weight of their flowers pull them over. I managed to
string up a group of them by using a tall, thin stake in the middle of
them and stringing green twine around them, wrapping it
once
around each lily stem to keep it in place. Viewed from a distance, the
stake is barely noticeable and the stems are more or less straight.
There are single lily stakes of various heights available in garden
supply catalogs, but the job of staking scores of these taller lilies
is more than I can contemplate without despair.
Predation
I can attest to the fact that deer
love lilies. I tried pepper spray last year to keep them from
the Asiatic-Oriental bed in the cutting garden, but I'm not sure it did
much good. For one thing, the head gardener down at the Red Butte
Gardens
in Salt Lake City said she'd stopped using pepper spray when she
discovered the deer making a feast of the hot pepper display. For
another, the spray does both
wash
off and wear off and therefore needs to be reapplied quite often.
After leaf emergence this year, we were shocked at finding a newly
planted and blooming rose stripped of leaves and blossoms. This was the
Perryman Rose ('Queen Elizabeth' described in In
Memorium - Harold Perryman). So we
decided to go the more fool-proof fencing route and surrounded the new
rose and lily bed to the north of the house with a temporary fence of
deer netting. The deer had also made a feast of these newly planted
roses last year -- so much so that we never saw one flower on the
'Julia Renaissance' roses, nor did we see more than a fraction of the
lilies.
In addition to the netting, we pushed in
several deer repellers around the lilies in the cutting garden. These
consist of a stake with an electric shocker across the top, powered by
batteries and baited. I don't know whether the netting discouraged the
deer from passing through the fenced-off bed to the cutting garden or
not, or whether the shockers actually shocked any curious deer noses,
but we've noticed no deer predation since, and we've had the netting down
for almost a month now. We seem to be testing fate with this, since we
haven't had the time to put the fence back in the spot for which we'd
originally bought it -- across the deer's habitual route of up the
north hill, then south and west through the garden. Time will tell.
Tiger Lily 'Lady Alice'
The gopher is another animal that loves lily bulbs. What's more, they
harvest these during the winter when we're all living in a fool's
paradise, looking forward to a bountiful spring. There's no question of
putting hundreds of lilies in baskets to foil these small pedators,
though this would be a solution in a small garden plagued with them.
After an enormous infestation of gophers a few years ago, we scattered
PVC pipes through out the infested beds with gopher bait inside
(keeping it from the birds) which
seemed to slow them down a bit. This we did after my husband, Alan,
tilled up a mountainous group of hills, no doubt harboring a colony of
them. And we have
accumulated all these cats now, you know. We still see plenty of gopher
hills come spring in both orchards and we're going to have to do
something about that soon. The cats don't seem to be interested enough
in harvesting rodents to go that far afield.
Mice and voles also love lily bulbs, but the cats seem to be keeping
the numbers down. Twenty-some years ago, I planted hundreds of tulips
on a hillside only to see them slowly disappear, victims of these
rodents' hunger. As a result we switched from tulips to daffodils,
because these bulbs are poisonous. In recent years, we've tentatively
added tulips to the daffodils without much loss -- at least, that we
can see.
In a later essay, and after I see how they fare, I'll talk about other
types of lilies planted here, such as the Orienpet, a hybrid of
Orientals and
trumpets. In the meantime,
All the best,
Joan
Katherine Shaw
mid-July
2004
Photos - Joan Katherine Shaw
Some on-line sources for lily
bulbs:
Brecks
Bulbs
Dutch Gardens
McClure & Zimmerman
Parks Bulbs
Wayside
Gardens, South Carolina
White Flower Farm
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In Memorium - Harold Perryrman
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