LILIES FROM JUNE TILL SEPTEMBER 
HELEN MORGENTHAU FOX 
Author of ‘‘Glimpses of Gardens in Southern Spain” (The Garden Magazine, November, 1922, pages 147— 1 52) and other articles 
Beauties from Europe and the Orient Readily Naturalized in American Gar¬ 
dens and Lending to Big and Little Alike an Air of Graceful Distinction 
to paint the lily, 
To throw a perfume on the violet, 
or add another hue 
Unto the rainbow .... 
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” 
Shakespeare (King John). 
8 N gardens of ancient Persia and Syria the Rose and the 
Lily bloomed side by side. Their beauty and fragrance 
were extolled by the poets, and artists wove and painted 
them into the textiles and frescoes of those days. The 
Lily with its graceful cuplike perianth and six recurving petals 
was the model for many decorative designs; but the Rose has 
long since out-distanced the Lily and has obtained the leading 
place in the favor of garden lovers. “A Rose for every farm¬ 
yard” is a familiar slogan; whereas when the possibility of a Lily 
for every farm-yard is suggested, comes the discouraging re¬ 
sponse that Lilies are “so difficult to grow.” Any book on 
Roses contains the most detailed and elaborate directions on 
their culture, but every grower of Roses in any except the most 
favored sections will tell you that to have beautiful Roses con¬ 
stant watchfulness and care have to be exerted. 
Lilies, on the whole, are easier to raise than Roses and have 
already made a good start in many humble farmhouse yards. 
In the country districts of New England and New York State 
the passerby occasionally catches a glimpse of sturdy orange 
Tiger Lilies or rosy speciosum Lilies flowering in front of the 
protecting wing of a green-shuttered white farmhouse. I know 
one tiny red brick pathway bordered, from the painted white 
wooden fence to the house, with vigorous Annunciation Lilies, 
and an Adirondack garden made glorious by the Japanese Gold- 
banded Lilies growing to huge size. 
Different Groups and What They Like 
O NLY within comparatively recent years have the majority 
of Japanese and American Lilies been known to cultiva¬ 
tion. The seekers for gold in 1849 found an unexpected treasure 
in the golden Lilies of the hills and valleys of California; almost 
at the same time American sailors and diplomats were signing 
treaties that opened the ports of China and Japan to Western 
commerce. The botanists and horticulturists were not long in 
following and soon discovered many new Lilies that had been 
waiting centuries for their beauty and loveliness to win the hom¬ 
age due them from dwellers over the seas in America and Europe. 
The introduction of these hitherto unknown kinds gave a 
great impetus to the growing of Lilies in Europe. Soon there¬ 
after the writings of Elwes, Baker, Wallace, and Krelage ap¬ 
peared; these, and later the books of Goldring, Grove, Adams, 
and Miss Jekyll, were all but two of them English. The difficul¬ 
ties that the English gardeners found in growing Japanese and 
American Lilies with their damp, cool climate were to be ex¬ 
pected. Unfortunately they painted such a gloomy picture of 
their failures that they frightened off many potential enthusiasts. 
Here in the United States our climatic conditions are such that 
we can have assured success with most of the Japanese, Chinese, 
and European Lilies in our Northeastern section. 
In the past, writers on Lilies have grouped them into divisions 
based on the shape of the perianth. These five classes have the 
musical sounding names of martagon, isolirion, eulirion, arch- 
elirion, and cardiocrinum. Another way to classify them is ac¬ 
cording to their geographic habitat. It seems that the most 
practical division for the grower of Lilies is according to their 
characters of (1) hardy and not hardy, (2) shade and sun loving, 
(3) bog and hillside growing, (4) stem and bulb rooting. 
The stem rooting ones, like Lilium tigrinum, have to be 
planted deep to give the bulb a chance to form many strong 
roots; while the bulb rooting kinds, like L. candidum, should not 
be planted more than three or at most four inches below the sur¬ 
face of the soil. Most Lilies need to have their “feet” cool, 
with the warm sunshine on their lovely, nodding heads. This is 
easy to arrange by planting them among low growing shrubs, 
preferably Broad-leaved Evergreens. This has the added ad¬ 
vantage of filling the soil with roots, thus forming a medium 
in which the Lilies thrive best. 
All Lilies need good drainage, even the bog kinds. One way 
to furnish good drainage, especially in a clay soil, is to dig a hole 
one foot deep and six inches wide and fill it with sand to within 
the required depth for planting, then lay the bulb sideways on 
this and cover with more sand to the surface of the soil, and put 
a few handfuls of top soil on top of the hole, to allow for settling. 
Among other ways given for providing drainage is putting 
sphagnum moss under the bulb or broken bits of flower-pots or 
lumps of charcoal. 
The shade loving Lilies do well, rising from Ferns planted on 
the edge of a wood or bordering woodland paths, under a pergola, 
or in a corner shaded by the house or garden wall. The sun- 
loving ones thrive out in the perennial border. Winter protec¬ 
tion is not best given by deep planting, as is often suggested, but 
by covering the ground where the bulbs are planted with boughs 
or leaves held down by corn-stalks, as one would treat any 
perennials. 
The main obstacle to success- is the difficulty of securing good 
bulbs at the right time of the year for planting out-of-doors. To 
get good bulbs, obtain them, if possible, from a near-by reliable 
grower or raise them yourself from seed or by vegetative propa¬ 
gation. Several growers in the United States, produce bulbs of 
many species on their own grounds; the rarer sorts, however, 
cannot always be secured in this way. If they have to be 
ordered from some dealer who, because of his distant source of 
supply, must necessarily have his bulbs arrive late, do not plant 
them in the garden the first year, but pot them up in soil consisting 
of one third sand and two thirds leaf-mold in deep pots, and put 
them in a coldframe and cover them with a mulch of leaves for 
the winter. After the flower has died down the next summer, it 
is time to plant them in their permanent place. Small bulbs 
are apt to be more vigorous than those that have been artificially 
forced into a large size. Dealers may get a bigger price for the 
larger bulbs, but the resulting failures bring fewer re-orders. 
Sorts That Are Easily Raised From Seed 
R AISING Lilies from seed is no more difficult than raising 
any other perennials. The only difference is that it takes 
longer for them to flower, and for that reason it is a good plan 
to have markers that can withstand the weather. In order to 
obtain seed it is safer to hand pollinate the flowers. In my 
garden very good results were obtained that way. Snowy 
candidums; creamy, rose-flushed regales; graceful golden cana- 
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