My Favourite Lily: Madrid

I am a big fan of Lily. Every time one opens in my garden I think, hmmmmmm, that might be a favourite. Then midway through lily season 'Madrid' opens and blows them all away. I am instantly reminded why she is and remains my favourite lily.

Her flowers are huge and there are always a lot of them. They open tall, almost eye level. She is a hot, bright orange that is translucent and neon all at once when the sun shines through her petals. She catches your eye in the garden no matter how far you are standing from her even with the myriad of colours she is competing with at that time of the season.

I have her in 2 spots now and I have already scoped out the third. If I am really lucky, when I dig and divide, I will end up with 4 or 5 spots!

Lots of Lily Blooming Now

 

Oriental White from Kelly, growing in the slide garden. This one is about 12 inches tall. lol.

 

Lily 'Madrid', my favourite lily in my garden and I have it in the nursery, in the drive garden and in the sun garden.

 

Lily 'Northern Dazzle', growing at the front lower level and in the back sun garden.

 

Lily, 'Northern Carillon', growing in the sun gardens and blooming for the first time. All the Northern series lilies were added just last year.

 

Lily 'Stargazer' has been growing in the bird sanctuary for a few years now. Still not sure how I feel about this one. It's pretty but it has a really strong lily scent and if the patch gets too big, I can't walk by it without wishing it was smaller.

 

Lily 'Northern Star', my favourite of the Northern series added last year. At least, it is my favourite so far... still waiting for Northern Sensation to open.

A Lily Plan

My 'Stargazer' Lily is just finishing up for this year. This is its' second season in this spot and it seems happy in front of the ninebark on the lower level of the bird sanctuary. Not far from it is a 'Navona' Lily in white. This year, I decided that I would add the pale pink of 'Renoir' to this area with them. I think it will really make the 'Stargazer' shine next season.

Lily

It has been a rather interesting year for my lily... and Linda's yard. Last fall in anticipation of our move, I sent Linda some of all my lily. In fact, I sent whole gardens of lily! Kelly planted them in a temporary place where they all came up and many of them bloomed. They were crowded but from the pictures I saw, they also looked happy. What it meant for my garden was that there were very few lily left. Although my orange lily garden was still big and beautiful, this 'Acapulco' was the only pink lily that came up in what was the pink lily garden. I moved it into the garden proper since the pink lily garden is now lawn and it didn't miss a beat. It was full of blooms on only two stalks, reminding me how much I love lily in the garden. I can't wait for more variety next year. Linda shipped me lily this week and it should arrive today. Now, where to plant...

Hope for Seven

This is the orange lily garden. My hope is that there is at least one of each of seven different lily varieties that were in that garden. I have no idea if it really does. Bets anyone?

Another day of digging in snow but I managed to get the red lily garden and pink lily garden dug. I think I only missed 'Acapulco' and 'Opus One' which can be a nice surprise for the new gardener. There are only four lily left to get and it is mostly because I forgot them until I had my boots off and the -5 temperature was not encouraging me to put them back on! I will get them tomorrow with tulips. I am worried I am not going to find a lot of the tulips. Some are marked but most are not and finding the lily under the snow was not easy eventhough they had dead stalks sticking up. Not always where the bulb was unfortunately. I am still going to try though.  Then Iris. There is an end in sight although everytime I go out, I think of something else I want to take. Today's addition to the list was Cerastium. I am running out of time though, if we don't get warmer daytime temperatures, the ground will be too frozen to dig in only a few more days.

Fall Moving

Here I am again, digging while paying no attention to the proper timing of anything. The only thing on my mind is that I am moving in either the spring or the summer and I want to keep my bulbs and tubers. So, I am digging in the snow and packing boxes to mail to Linda. I am sending glads for her 'fridge in case I am not there yet when it is time to plant them.

I dug up my orange lily garden today and although it is all mixed together, I hope this pile of bulbs contains 'Grand Cru', 'Cancun', Danielle's Hula, Early Orange and Tiny White as well as the Tangerine and Easter Yellow shorter varieties.

I managed to separate out the 'New Wave', 'Landini', 'Orange Electric' and 'Madrid'. I started packing the first box although I think there will be three this size before I am done!

Linda and Kelly will dig trenches or something to throw them in until I get there and I won't have to try and dig frozen ground in early spring here. Tomorrow the agenda is to dig all the pink and red lily. I hope the nicer afternoon temperatures hold for a few more days because I would like to get tulips and iris too :)

Can't you smell that smell?

Contrary to what people who introduced us thought would happen, Linda and I agree on almost everything. Where we disagree though, we tend to be at totally opposite ends of the spectrum. Enter the Lily. Linda prefers Oriental to Asiatic and this year, mentioned to me that she is considering sticking to only Oriental for future additions to her garden. Linda does have Lily problems in her garden that I do not have to contend with in mine so I will leave it to her to outline her preference. I however, prefer Asiatic and when these Stargazer Orientals started blooming, I began to consider only adding Asiatic to my garden in future. This Spring, I received 25 Stargazer Oriental Lily. I gave a couple away to another gardening friend and planted the rest all in the same garden, in three patches, to both sides of the path. They are blooming now and look awesome. The buds start green, turn bright white and open to this blinding pink. I can see them from the front deck which is an added bonus for anything blooming in the lower level of that garden. I can't say enough about how bright and cheery they are in the garden. Lots of people tell me that Stargazer are not spectacular for Oriental Lily but they look pretty darn beautiful to me. The problem is the smell. I find the smell very disagreeable and if I am standing in it too long, it can even give me an upset stomach. I had a friend in my garden last week that mentioned that same thing as we walked through this spot. She agreed that the smell is both strong and sickening. Since she mentioned it before she knew how I felt about Oriental Lily scent, I know I am not alone. The Asiatics typically do not smell and if they do, it is not the same cloying kind of scent that I find so overwhelming with the Orientals. I am keeping these Stargazer and they can stay right where they are as long as they don't get to the point where I can smell them on the front deck. If that happens, they will need to be moved further from the house so it is a good thing they are so bright. As I suggested to Linda, she will just have to be my Oriental Lily expert and I will try to do that for her with Asiatics. As soon as I buy another book ;)

Outside My Zone

When I first started gardening, I made what I think is the most common mistake of a new gardener. I believed that if my local greenhouses were selling a plant as a perennial, that it was perennial in this zone. Fortunately, it did not take me long to figure this out because I had a gardening mentor in my friend Judy and although I didn't always listen, she always had good advice. When I didn't listen, she would say, 'It never hurts to try' and when I failed, she would never say, 'I told you so'. Judy knew that when I wasn't listening, it was because I was so taken with a plant that only Mother Nature was going to stop me. As a fellow gardener, she understood. All those early mistakes put me in a place where I would not even think about planting any perennial outside my zone for several years. Slowly, I started to warm up to zone 4 perennials and now have several in my zone 3 garden. Some do just OK, like the Coral Bells 'Key Lime Pie'. Some never manage to gain a foothold like the Hydrangea 'Endless Summer' that started as a pair and have been killed off to a small piece of root I will mail to Linda and hope she can save. Others, however, like all of the lily, survive spectacularly well to reward me with a stunning display. There is a little extra mulching to do each Fall but mulching is probably the simplest chore in my garden. I read there is a little more work in the Spring to remove the extra mulch on zone 4 Iris. I don't do that for the lily but this year I added Iris outside my zone so I will have to start that next Spring if I want to see blooms. Each year, my bravery seems to grow in terms of what I will try. I do dig up and pass on when these experimental plants do not perform well for me. Mother Nature does always win and I find most often, it is not worth the fight. I would encourage other gardeners to try anything once. You never know what will establish and one zone opens up whole new plant possibilities. Just remember these two things: we all kill plants sometimes and it never hurts to try.

Possible Pair?

I'm thinking of moving these two lilies together for next year.  What do you think?
They are both oriental x trumpet - the first is Red Hot, the second is Touching, and they are both blooming now.