Summer gardens become more vibrant with the charming star-shaped and brightly colored blooms of lilies. However, in areas with harsh winters, these perennial flowers require extra care during fall. Fortunately, our guide to growing lilies provides all the necessary information to ensure that your garden is filled with beautiful blooms. Renowned for their elegant appearance and sweet fragrance, lilies offer magnificent blooms from early summer until the first frost by mixing early, mid, and late varieties. These versatile flowers flourish in both formal and naturalistic settings and grow well in containers, making them fantastic cut flowers! Typically, lilies have trumpet-shaped blooms with six simple or marked tepals on tall stalks with long, narrow leaves and are available in an array of pink, gold, red, orange, and white colors. Various types of lilies, such as oriental, asiatic, and species types, are available. When planting lilies to create a series of blooms, remember that asiatic lilies usually blossom first, followed by orientpets and then oriental varieties. Asiatic lilies are the shortest species, growing between two and three feet tall, and bloom in early summer after peonies while preferring well-drained soil. Easter lilies are commonly grown indoors as holiday plants but thrive outdoors in warm regions of North America, blooming around Easter and should be transplanted into the garden after flowering. Oriental lilies have a famously strong scent and can grow up to four feet tall, while trumpet lilies resemble oriental lilies and produce many smaller, closed trumpet-like flowers with a beautiful fragrance. Apart from the above types, tiger lilies, martagon lilies, and hybrids such as ‘Orienpet’ and ‘LA’ lilies are available, so choose the lily type that best suits your style from your favorite online gardening supplies retailer’s catalog!
