Serenade is one of the Mid-Century hybrids, a good clear 
orange lily with large, wide-petaled flowers that face outward. 
Hybrids are now available in an 
almost endless variety of form, 
color, size and season of bloom 
By JAN DE GRAAFF, (Ore.) 
Photos by Oregon Bulb Farms 
grow rapidly and well, with few demands on us. We 
lack the skilled labor, the time and the money to nurse 
difficult plants along. The garden lily which was so popu- 
lar in all gardens at the turn of the century thrived well 
for Grandmother but became a gardener’s bugbear. In 
fact it was almost threatened with extinction because of 
its low resistance to diseases and pests. 
But all over the country lily-lovers set out to diagnose 
and cure the lily’s ills, slowly building the stepping stones 
to better, more vigorous garden plants—larger, longer- 
lasting flowers in new, often more refined colors, greater 
tolerances to heat and cold, to moisture and to drought, 
and with greater resistance to diseases and pests. 
From the continuing research in lily-breeding two im- 
portant results have emerged: the birth of a host of new 
improved varieties, as well as the knowledge of how to 
grow them. Even as this is written new groups of hybrid 
lilies bred from wild native lilies, crossed and recrossed. 
combined and recombined, are appearing on the_horti- 
cultural horizon to produce an almost endless variety of 
form, color, size and season of flowering. 
Looking over today’s new lilies in order to illustrate 
for you the great advances in the field, I find five broad 
groups. of hybrids—Aurelian, Olympic, Mid-Century, 
Hollywood and Fiesta lilies. ; 
For spectacular progress and sheer loveliness, | would 
place the Aurelian lilies in the first rank. Just 50 years 
ago there flowered in the Kew Botanic Gardens in England 
a lily of surpassing beauty which in habit, size and form 
resembled the golden rayed lily of Japan. The petals 
were wide-spreading and curiously twisted, with recurving 
tips. The color was a creamy buff, becoming almost white 
with age. This new lily, (Continued on next page) 
T: succeed in the modern garden, today’s plants must 
