LILIES - RHS Lily Group

Top left, ‘Helen North’, Above left, ‘Beguiling’, Above right, ‘Ariadne’.
Fortunately, when I replied to Peter’s e-mail, I was able to inform him that one of
the Border Belles, Kirstie McManus, still had his original stock, in the aphid-proof
house Chris had assisted with, and was aiming to offer bulbs, commercially, from
this autumn onwards.
The work of the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens
(NCCPG), which was founded in 1978, has led to the creation of over 600
national collections of plants that might have been lost to people with an interest
in gardening. Heather Berger and her NCCPG colleague, Elizabeth Harrison,
were not only close friends of Chris and Marie North, but they also played
an important part in establishing the national collection of North Hybrids at
the National Trust for Scotland’s Branklyn Garden, in Perth, to which Heather
modestly alludes in the following paragraph.
I first met Chris North in the 1980s by which time he had retired from Mylnefield
and active lily breeding. As neighbours my husband and I became frequent
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