Lilac: the best varieties and cultivation

There is a beautiful omen: a lilac in the garden is for luck. Perhaps that is why it was often planted in gardens, in front gardens, to admire the delicate purple or white tassels of flowers and to inhale their delicate aroma.

Lilac was a symbol of spring, spring holidays and a good grade on exams with a 5-point system, schoolgirls were looking for a 5-petaled star.

The best varieties of lilac

Varieties of lilac have a wide variety of shapes and colors of petals (double, simple, sharp petals like a flame or round), shapes of inflorescences. With the modern ease of searching, you can choose interesting areas for collections or garden decoration – for example, the white varieties “Jeanne D’Arc”, “Alice Harding”, (Mme Lemoine), “Primrose” ), “Galina Ulanova”, “Beauty of Moscow”, “Memory of Kolesnikov”, “Flora.

Florium online store offers the following lilac varieties with white flowers: “Lebioduszka”, “Miss Ellen Willmott.

Purple-red, lilac and almost blue varieties “Charles Joly”, “Lights of Donbas”, “India”, “Kosmos”, “Bohdan Khmelnytskyi”, “Kyiv Waltz”, “Amethyst” are also interesting ( Amethyst) etc.

The contrasting white stripes on the dark purple flowers of the Sensation variety, bred in 1938, will surely decorate the garden.

Also, by grafting several varieties onto one bush, you can create an incredible wonder with various tassels.

Lilac care

Lilac can hardly be called too demanding to living conditions. However, certain conditions need to be created for this decorative shrub.

Lilac bushes can be planted only in areas with deep groundwater (1.5 m).

Soil with a neutral or close to neutral reaction (pH 6.6-7.5).

The structure is suitable for light, sandy, moderately moist.

Lilac grows and blooms poorly on heavy waterlogged soils.

This certain unpretentiousness, frost resistance and drought resistance make it indispensable for the garden or for the summer cottage.

Lilac pruning

The rapid growth of basal hairs needs to be controlled.

There is an opinion that it is useful not just to cut off the inflorescences of a lilac, but to actually break them off. By breaking off or cutting lilac inflorescences, you unwittingly remove future flower buds.

But for a long decorative life, the lilac definitely needs sanitary pruning.

It consists in removing faded inflorescences, excessively thickened crown of branches, weak non-viable shoots.

Also cut the shoots affected by pests and thin the crown.

Pruning should be done immediately after flowering.

Inflorescences should be cut higher than the first pair of leaves or buds, which are located opposite each other, and as close as possible to them.

Near the root of the lilac bush, root growth, the so-called “beard”, grows.

It should be cleaned once or twice a year.

After flowering and summer sanitary pruning, it is advisable to apply nitrate and phosphorus fertilizers under the lilac. This helps the plant lay flower buds for strong blooms the following year.

Pruning grafted field lilac is that pruning should be done above the grafting site.

All lateral growth should be removed, because the flowering on it will correspond to the type and variety of the scion, and not the highly decorative scion that you are counting on. Pruning should be done with a sharpened secateur so that the wood of the bush is not affected by fungal infections.

Lilac in the composition

In the garden, lilac goes well with tulips, hostas and geichers, lilies of the valley, and peonies.

Flowering daylily and lupine bushes also look good against the green lilac that has already bloomed.

You can buy lilac seedlings, as well as seedlings of other decorative bushes, in the Florium online store.

Sincerely, experienced gardener, Olesya.

Read also The path to color harmony in the garden.

Published: 21.01.2020