There is one fact that explains most of how to grow lilies properly: a lily makes roots from its stem as well as from its base. It is why they want planting deep. It is why a top dressing in spring matters more than a feed. And it is why a lily in a shallow pot never quite does what the picture promised.
Can You Plant Lily Bulbs In Autumn
Yes, and there is a case for it. A lily bulb has no papery tunic to seal it the way a tulip does, it is never quite fully dormant, and one that goes into the ground in autumn has months in which to make roots before it is asked to produce a stem. The catch is that a lily sitting in cold wet soil all winter is the likeliest of all lilies to be lost, so autumn planting suits gardens with drainage you already trust. On heavy clay, wait.
Condition matters more than the calendar. A lily has no tunic. It dries out on a shelf in a way that a daffodil never does, and a bulb that has spent three weeks in a warm shop in an open bag has already spent part of what you are paying for. Plant them the week they arrive. If something stops you, bury them in slightly damp compost somewhere cold rather than leaving them in the bag.
Why Do Lilies Die Over Winter
The most common cause for loss over the winter is poor drainage, water freezing in and around the bulb. That is worth reading twice, because it is not the cold that kills a lily, it is water standing against it when the cold arrives. The same variety will take a hard winter without complaint on a free draining slope and fail completely twenty feet away in the hollow where the water gathers.
The remedy is mechanical rather than clever. Loosen the soil to a depth of 30cm (12 inches), work in plenty of good garden compost, and on heavy ground add a layer of horticultural grit, or set the bulbs on a layer of sharp sand so the water runs away from the base instead of collecting beneath it. Raised borders and containers avoid the problem altogether.
Do Lilies Come Back Every Year
They do, and a good clump improves rather than declines for the first several years. A lily builds its bulb while the leaves are up, so each season’s flower is paid for by the summer before it, and an undisturbed group tends to reach its best somewhere around the third or fourth year. After that it begins to crowd itself.
You will know when the time comes to lift. The flowers get smaller and there are more stems than there used to be, which is one bulb having split into several rather than anything being wrong with it. Lift in autumn once the foliage has gone over, pull the clump apart with your hands, and get the largest pieces back in the ground the same day, because lily bulbs resent being dry. Two seasons is sometimes all a vigorous variety needs.
How Do You Get Rid Of Lily Beetle
By hand, early, and often. The adult is a bright scarlet beetle about 8mm long with a black head and black legs, which makes it the most conspicuous pest in a British garden, and that is the one thing in your favour. They emerge on sunny days in late March and April and stay active until October, and two minutes of looking every few days will keep on top of them better than anything out of a bottle.
The larvae do the real damage and are the ones people miss. Eggs are laid on the underside of the leaf from late April onwards, and the grubs that hatch cover themselves completely in their own wet black excrement, so what you are actually looking for is not a grub at all but a small smear of dirt underneath a leaf. Scrape them off. Where you can bear to leave a few, birds, frogs, wasps and predatory ground beetles all take them, and three native parasitoid wasps attack the larvae.
Here is the part nobody mentions. They can fly short distances between plants and neighbouring gardens, but their spread is mainly caused by human movement of plants, soil or garden waste. That makes a pot grown lily carried home from a garden centre the likeliest way the beetle ever arrives in a clean garden. Buy dry bulbs where you can, and keep anything pot grown apart for a fortnight before it joins the border.
Spend and Save
The more you plant, the more you save. The discount applies to your whole order, and delivery is free over £100.
How To Grow Lilies In Pots
They enjoy all the benefits of container growing, they can easily be moved, one group can be replaced by another as they go over, and it is easy to monitor their general health. For the tall sorts a pot is often the best place of all. Start with a layer of horticultural grit, use a deep container rather than a wide shallow one, and leave a few inches clear at the top of the compost for the spring top dressing.
Two things then decide whether it works. Once growth starts the compost must never be allowed to dry out, which is the commonest way a potted lily goes backwards, and a large planter is a good deal more stable than a small one, which is worth considering when growing tall plants in gusty conditions. Asiatic hybrids prefer a slightly acidic compost, so an ericaceous John Innes suits them.
Deep red, short and sturdy, no staking needed.
Soft pink, and one of the freest flowering of the dwarf sorts.
Cream, compact, and happy in a deep pot on a terrace.
Are Lilies Safe Around Cats
Not if you keep cats. Every part of a lily is toxic to them, the pollen and the vase water included, so where there is a cat in the house the sensible thing is to keep lilies out of it and out of the part of the garden the cat uses. Our pollen free varieties save the tablecloth but do not change that, because the toxin is in the whole plant. If a cat has been in contact with one, ring a vet the same day.
Which Lilies Are Scented
The Orientals and the trumpets are where the scent is, and the Asiatics have almost none at all. That is worth knowing before you buy rather than afterwards, because the two groups look much alike in a catalogue photograph and behave completely differently in a room.
Scent is also a question of quantity and distance. A flower may have a pleasing scent from a distance but be unpleasant close to, or in great concentration, which is typically true of lilies used in large numbers indoors and is especially noticeable as the flowers begin to fade. Outdoors this hardly ever happens. One or two stems near a door in July is the way to use them.
Pure white, and the scent most people picture when they think of a lily.
Upward facing, strongly scented, and the best known Oriental of all.
An apricot trumpet, scented in the evening rather than the middle of the day.
Why Are My Lilies Getting Smaller
Usually because the foliage came down too early, or because the bulb was small when it went in. A lily has no way of paying for next summer except through this summer’s leaves, so anything that shortens the green season shortens the flower that follows.
There is also a trap in the way lilies are sold. Globally they rank as the fourth most popular flower, and the huge volume grown for cutting has always worked against the gardener, because cheap bulbs are dominated by varieties with upward facing flowers, far easier to cut and to package, rather than the outward or downward facing flowers that generally suit a garden better. A cheap lily is often a cut flower variety standing in a border it was never bred for.
A top dressing in the spring is essential to maintain vigorous growth. Most lilies make basal roots first and then stem roots as they come up, and those stem roots feed from the layer of soil above the bulb rather than from the bulb itself, so compost spread as the shoots appear goes exactly where it is wanted. Skip it and the clump coasts on what it has.
When Do You Cut Lilies Back
After flowering deadhead but leave the foliage until it starts to wilt, because photosynthesis continues to build up new food stores for next year’s flowers. In practice that means not until well into autumn, once the leaves have yellowed of their own accord. Cutting a green lily stem down in August is the most reliable way there is of getting a smaller flower the following summer.
Deadheading itself is worth the trouble. Take the spent flower off just behind the swelling where the seed pod would form, leave as much stem and leaf as you can, and what the plant would have spent on seed goes into the bulb instead. Cut stems for the house sparingly, for exactly the same reason.
Bloms Private Membership
Free postage for a full year. It comes free with any order over £100, or you can add it at checkout for £9.95.
What To Plant With Lilies
Something that shades their feet. Lilies enjoy the company of other plants, some shade around their roots but much of the foliage and flowers in airy sunshine, which is why a lily standing alone in the open middle of a bare border seldom looks as good as the same lily rising through something else.
For the weeks before they open, alliums. Their heads come in May and June while the lily stems are still climbing, and the dry seedheads that follow stand right through the lily season instead of leaving a gap where the flowers were. Camassia does the same work in a damper border, and eremurus gives you height at the back of it in June and July while the lilies are still in bud.
For afterwards, gladioli and dahlias. Both are planted in the spring alongside the lilies, both start as the lilies are finishing, and between them they carry the same ground from July through to the first frost without anything needing to be lifted and replanted in between.
Low planting does a practical job as well as a decorative one. Trailing plants or small bedding annuals add to the show, help shade the soil and regulate its temperature, and in a container they stop the compost baking through July. Hardy geraniums and alchemilla do the same work in a border.