LILIES - RHS Lily Group

it can be extremely variable from year to year, in that some winters for example,
can be very mild, with almost no frosts, others can be extremely cold, with
temperatures going down to minus 15°C. However, usually, autumns and winters
are fairly mild, with temperatures from 10 to minus 5°C, and springs can be quite
wet and alternately cold or warm. Summers are usually very warm and dry.
Sometimes, we get what they call “Indian summers” which are autumns where
the temperatures rarely go below 15 to 18°C for many weeks.
The lilies
I have been growing lilies since 1999, when I purchased my first three lily bulbs
at the age of 14. They were bulbs of an asiatic lily hybrid, the golden yellow
and orange ‘Connecticut King’, which has, since then, established itself profusely
here in my borders in my parents’ garden. I guess that I must have over 30 of
them now.
When they flowered for the first time at the end of June 1999, I was struck by
the grace and beauty of the flowers, and that autumn, realised that ‘Connecticut
King’ was not the only lily in existence, and purchased a few more hybrids. In
the spring of 2000, I bought my first lily species, two bulbs of Lilium speciosum
rubrum. By then, I had started to become more and more interested in lilies, and
had started documenting them in increasing detail.
Time passed, and in June 2001, I went on a hike in the Jura, and next to
the road, my eyes caught sight of a marvellously strong and vigorous Lilium
martagon, with over 20 large deep pink flowers, on a stem over 150 cm tall. I
think that it was at that moment that my real interest in lilies, and lily species,
began.
I then started collecting lilies properly, first with the species commonly
available at the time in Swiss garden centres, such as Lilium pumilum,
L. martagon, L. henryi, L. regale and L. lancifolium. However, for me, that was
not enough. I had been bitten by the lily fervour, and wanted rarer lilies for my
collections. I therefore started buying lilies from France and the UK, by mail
order, and got my hands on sumptuous lilies, such as ‘Black Beauty’, and species
such as Lilium leucanthum, L. superbum and L. canadense. Since then, my lily
collection has been growing at a rapid rate, with lilies from all over the world
joining my collection each year. In January 2005 I ordered lily bulbs from China
for the first time, bulbs of excellent quality, but the origins of which are not
always certain to be from nursery raised plants, and might be collected in the
wild. Since then, I have ordered a second time and most bulbs have flowered,
and I have been fairly lucky in that approximately ninety per cent of the bulbs
that flowered were in fact the correct species. (Bulbs that come from China are
sometimes mislabelled or wrongly identified).
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