LILIES - RHS Lily Group

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A brief history of the
RHS Lily Committee
In an article first published in Lilies and Related Plants 1992-1993
Brent Elliott describes how the Lily Group came into being.
(with additional material by Anthony Hayward)
N 5 NOVEMBER 1931 Colonel Durham, the Secretary of the Royal Horticultural
OSociety,
wrote to 15 noted lily growers that “The Council of the Royal
Horticultural Society has under consideration the formation of a standing
committee for Lilies on the same lines as the existing Narcissus and Tulip
Committee”, and invited them to a meeting on the 17th to discuss the matter.
Those assembled at the meeting unanimously agreed that it was a good idea to
form such a committee, and that its scope should be limited “for the present” to
“Lilies, nomocharis, fritillaries and their hybrids”. The activities of the Committee
were to include arranging lectures and a conference, maintaining a collection of
lilies at Wisley, publishing a year-book, and compiling a register of hybrids.
Who were the founding members of the Lily Committee?
First and foremost, Col. F.C. (later Sir Frederick) Stern, banker, soldier and gardener
of Highdown, Sussex, who appears to have been the initiator of the idea in Council
and who was unanimously chosen to be the first Chairman, and in addition:
Maurice Amsler, medical officer to Eton College,
Roger Bevan of Crowsley Grange,
J. Comber, head gardener at Nymans,
John Coutts, then Deputy Curator at Kew and soon to be
co-author of ‘Lilies’ 1 ,
W.A. Constable of Paddock Wood nurseryman (shortly to transfer his
business to Tunbridge Wells),
William Cuthbertson of Dobbies’ Nurseries (elected a Vice- Chairman),
Arthur Grove, complier of the Supplement of Elwes’ Monograph of the
Genus Lilium (also a Vice-Chairman),
Captain J.C.H. Jenkinson of Knap Hill Nurseries,
Sir William Lawrence, former Treasurer of the RHS,
Albert Pam of Wormleybury,
1 The RHS Lindley Library possesses Fred Stoker’s review copy of Woodcock and Coutts’
‘Lilies’, the title page of which Stocker annotated as follows: “nominally by H. Drysdale
Woodcock KC and J. Coutts VMH….but principally by W.T. STEARN whose text I have
read in great part”.