All gardeners know and love the common lilac. It came so early to this country and fits so perfectly into the surroundings of many an old houses that many people mistakenly think it is a native plant. A surprising number of otherwise up-to-date gardeners fail to realize, however, the extraordinary beauty of the newer varieties and their usefulness in many garden situations.
Few hardy shrubs are so adaptable or give such great returns in beauty and fragrance for so little first cost and so little subsequent care. This is true over an unusually wide territory, from the coldest parts of Maine, Minnesota and Canada, south along our Atlantic Coast to North Carolina, over the entire Middle West to the Rockies, and on to the Puget Sound country and even into many parts of California.
The common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) sometimes called French lilac, is native to Bulgaria and adjacent areas of Eastern Europe. The term “French lilac” has arisen from the fact that the greatest number of improved varieties originated in the nursery of Victor Lemoine and Son in Nancy, France, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Most other lilacs are larger plants, later blooming, and have only a small color range. They bear little resemblance to the plant that most gardeners associate with the name of lilac. They lack its lovely fragrance, and have a rank odor more like that of the privets.
The common lilac is worthy of an important place in the smallest garden. Any plant which has been as widely used cannot be fastidious about soils or care. For that reason we often see it cruelly abused planted in the worst soil and in the shade of shallow-rooting trees such as maples.
Of course, it doesn’t deserve this treatment. Give it good garden soil and don’t be afraid to feed it well if you want the biggest, finest blooms and the greatest number of them. Give it full sun, or only a little shade it will survive in quite deep shade, but won’t bloom. And prune it very little, but intelligently.
Let us start with the planting. Buy good 2 to 3-foot or 3 to 4 foot plants from a quality nursery offering a good selection of varieties.
Get own-root plants and be willing to pay more for them. Some nurseries grow their plants from cuttings or from suckers. Many others graft on privet or on ash, then plant so deeply that own-roots are formed before the plant is sold. Plants without such own-roots may be very short lived. A few nurseries graft on lilac seedlings and defend the practice. Don’t touch such plants with a 10-foot pole. They will grow well, but the seedling stock may send up suckers that will give inferior blooms and crowd out the better variety.
Plant in very early spring or, except in the bitterest of cold climates, in the autumn. It must be early spring, before the leaves open.
Big Holes
Dig a good big hole. Don’t be stingy about this. The plant will probably live and grow if jammed into a tiny hole. A big hole filled with good topsoil mixed with some peat. leafmold, or manure with bonemeal, or a good commercial fertilizer will give such superior results that it’s just foolish not to make this preliminary effort. Set the plants a few inches deeper than they were in the nursery and water them well if the weather is dry.
Prune off any broken roots, of course, just as you would with any plant, and spread the roots don’t leave them bunched up. Prune the top only enough to balance it nicely most nurseries do that before shipping. You do not have to add lime to your soil, but if you live in an acid- soil region the plants will grow better if you do. (If you have doubts about the acidity of your soil, have it tested by either a private laboratory or your state agricultural experiment station.)
The plants are now ready to be let alone and will probably take care of themselves indefinitely. You can see plants by abandoned farmhouses and old caved-in cellars that have lived untended for a century. But you won’t get the best flowers that way with a lilac or any other plant.
So give your plants at least a little attention! When suckers come up, as they will on most varieties, keep a half-dozen or a dozen of the best ones – that’s good insurance if anything happens to the original stems but cut off the rest. Don’t have a forest of shoots around the plant.
Keep a weather eye open for the few troubles that may come your way. Borers are perhaps the most irritating of these. They may get into the plant’s best stem, and in a year or two cause its death. In May and June you may see little telltale heaps of sawdust that show they are at work. The easiest treatment is with a commercial borer preparation that comes in a tube like tooth paste and is easy to squeeze into the borer hole.
Repellent sprays are also being tried, and when perfected and thoroughly tested may prove quicker and more effective. Then there may be scale insects. They can be wiped off or sprayed with any good oil spray diluted according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Many gardeners worry when mildew attacks the foliage in late summer. While it is unsightly, it is reassuring to know it does little, if any, harm to the plants. It is also encouraging to realize that plant breeders are developing varieties resistant to mildew, and even some with attractive autumn foliage color.
Where to Plant
Where should you plant lilacs? A single plant is effective just off the corner of a house, or in an angle formed by a wing. Plants may line a path or road, or they may form a background for a flower border, or can be massed in a screen planting.
It is strange that so many gardeners think of the improved varieties as “new.” Several good ones have been known in gardens for a century, and many more for half a century.
