Neu Improved Qrneuch Lilacs 
Buy Own Root and Get the Best — Our Plants are all Own Root 
Is from a photograph of four average sized plants of our Own Root 
French Lilacs showing one plant of two-to three-foot size, and three 
plants of a three to four-foot size. 
The line running through each plant shows the depth you should 
plant your bushes. 
To one who has never grown an Own Root French Lilac, the price 
may seem high, but we feel sure you would not wish to care for a plant 
for five years and offer it for a price below what we are charging. 
Direction for Planting Lilac 
ar Other Shrubs 
1. When your package arrives, stand it in water overnight without 
unwrapping the bale. See page 40 to see how deep to plant. 
2. Before you open your package, dig the holes large enough to 
take the Lilac roots without crowding. Fill each hole with a pail of 
water and allow it to seep away. 
3. Do not spread out your plants and let them lie on the ground 
while you are planting. 
4. Take one Lilac from your package at a time and work the soil 
carefully about the roots until the hole is half full. Then tamp the soil 
about the roots unusually hard. Pour in a pail of water and go on to 
the next plant and treat it in the same manner. 
5. When you have completed your planting, come back to the first 
one and fill the hole with soil and tamp it down also. Then place some 
loose mellow soil over the top of the ground. 
6. Keep your plants well cultivated the first year so they will become 
well established. 
7. If the planting is made in the fall, place a coarse mulch about the 
plants the first winter to keep the ground from heaving. 
8. If your ground will grow a good garden, it will also grow a good 
Lilac. If your soil is poor, you could place some well rotted cow manure, 
if some is obtainable, in the bottom of the hole before you make your 
planting but this should be tamped down tightly with some good 
garden soil on top before the root is placed in the hole. 
9. If you use a commercial fertilizer, dig a trench about your plant 
early in the spring about a foot away from the main stem. Cover this 
with soil and the rain will wash this fertilizer equally about the roots. 
10. Be sure to keep your plants well watered during dry weather. 
Watch them from the time you make your planting until they have 
become thoroughly established. 
If you follow the above directions, you should succeed with every 
one of our plants. 
[51] 
Why Lilacs May Fail to Bloom 
We are asked a number of times during the course of the year, 
“Why do my Lilacs fail to bloom?” 
It is impossible to answer this question satisfactorily by letter. 
There are a number of reasons why Lilacs fail to bloom. We 
cannot tell which special reason is applicable in each individual 
case. We are giving a number of causes in this catalog and leav- 
ing you to decide which of these fit your individual problem. 
We have no difficulty here at the nursery. Our plants are 
loaded with flowers each year and if your plants are not giving 
satisfactory bloom, some one of the following causes must be 
responsible. 
1. Your plants may not have been handled carefully enough when you made 
your planting. The roots may have been exposed to the air and some of the 
vitality of the plant weakened. A bundle of Lilacs comes to you and this bundle 
is often opened up and the plants separated and looked over. Then they are 
laid out in the sun or shade while the holes for them are dug and the planting 
goes on. The plants grow but they received a setback from this exposure of 
the roots and it often takes two or three years to overcome this mistreatment. 
2. It may be the roots were not spread out carefully and soil packed tightly 
about them at planting time. The roots may have become jammed in a cramped 
and twisted mass in the hole, and growth stunted. In filling in the hole dry 
dirt may have been pulled in over the roots and so reduced the vitality of the 
plant as to check its right growth for several years. 
3. The young plant may be planted so close to trees or larger shrubs as to 
rob it of much of its vitality. 
4. It may be in too much shade or in dry gravelly soil. Lilacs like a ri 
heavy soil but not a wet acid soil. 
5. It may be your plants are making altogether too much growth and that 
such growth needs checking. Or they may have formed a great mass of heavy 
branches from the ground with a tremendous branchy top growth and have 
reached a point where they have stopped going forward and produce no bloom. 
If your plants are making a very rapid growth, sending out long new shoots 
with no bloom, go through your plants about the middle of June and trim 
out about one-half of the new growth back to the old wood. This will have 
a tendency to cause blooming buds to set on the balance of the new growth 
for the next year. If your bushes have a great many branches from the ground 
and many short top branches go through your plants in March in the North 
or earlier in the South (before the sap starts) and cut out about one-half 
of the old branches to the ground. This will cause a new growth which no 
doubt will bring the plant into heavy blooming. 
Now any of the foregoing causes might be the reason your Lilacs are not 
blooming. You are in a position to analyze your difficulty much better than 
we. We have no further information to offer. 
Do not let your Lilacs bloom the first year you set them out. 
They might bloom, but these blooms would only be a disappoint- 
ment. Such blooms would be very small, have very little color, 
and the color would not be at all true or attractive in any way. 
The bushes really begin to blossom the second year and the 
blooms will increase in size and beauty if well cared for over a 
period of some ten years. By careful handling they can be kept 
at perfection as long as one lives. We have Lilac bushes in Fari- 
bault that we know are over 80 years old. 
INSIST ON Own Root Lilacs 
In placing your order for Lilacs, you will naturally compare 
prices. 
Do not confuse the prices of Lilacs grafted or budded on 
California Privet with the price of own-root Lilacs. 
It is the Own-Root on a French Lilac that makes it cost more. 
Our French Lilacs are on their own root 
