LILIES FOR THE HOME GARDEN. 83 



Many lilies cannot stand our hot dry summers, coming from cool, 

 moist ravines or mountain sides, borders of streams, or other places 

 where the drainage is natural and perfect. To succeed with such, 

 we must imitate nature. Aesop told the gardener of his master, 

 Xanthus, that; "The Earth is stepmother to those plants which 

 are incorporated into her soil, but mother to those which are her 

 own free production." This may be the reason why our own 

 native species are capable of withstanding the severity of our 

 winters, while those from foreign countries are not. 



The late Peter Hanson of Brooklyn, for whom our beautiful 

 Hansoni was named, was one of the most successful growers in 

 this country, growing from 1870 to 1885 all the varieties known at 

 that time. He planted them in properly constructed rock-works 

 where they had moisture and shade for the bulbs, thus imitating 

 their native habitats. I visited him one summer morning at six 

 o'clock, his only leisure time, and saw his success with many 

 varieties which baffled the skill of others. 



The late Peter Barr, when visiting this country, insisted that we 

 should cover our lilies with lath shades. This is good for varieties 

 which cannot stand our dry, hot days of summer, but there is no 

 need to do it with spcciosum, tigrinums, elegans, Batemanniae, and 

 auratum, in field culture, as we have grown them successfully 

 without artificial shading, with the two-horse cultivator thoroughly 

 and often stiring the soil, supplying and conserving the moisture 

 where needed. The amateur has to accomplish this by other means 

 as did Hanson and others by mulching and shading. I have found 

 excelsior an excellent mulch using it thinly on seed beds, and 

 thicker on older stock; it is neat and clean; weeds can be easily 

 removed or it can be taken off while the weeds are pulled and the 

 soil stirred and then replaced. Coarse manure, peat, cocoa fibre, 

 leaves, etc. may be used. A common practice among amateur 

 cultivators is to plant lilies in shrubberies ,with good results. Care 

 should be exercised in selecting a good location for the lily bed to 

 have it well drained, for no lilies can thrive in ground that is water 

 soaked. Even those growing in swamps or on the margins of brooks 

 are found growing in the surface soil, above the water or often in 

 the sphagnum where the medium is aerated. Lilies in their native 

 habitats grow in a varietv of soils. It does n't matter so much 



