Luscious Lilies

The world of lilies is diverse but among my favourites are the species and martagon lilies. These demure and intricate lilies offer a wide range of bold colours and beautiful detailing usually with great, nodding turks cap flowers with their recurved petals and freckled spotting.

‘Arabian Knight’ is a Lilium martagon hybrid with graceful petals deepening in rich, rust colour and red towards their tips from orange centres.

Lilium martagon ‘Fairy Morning’ has pink buds opening to shades of pink, peach, and tangerine overlain with burgundy spots.

‘Guinea White’ is a hybrid of the classic woodland Lilium martagon with graceful golden yellow petals with white centres all speckled in deep red.

They can be grown in part shade to full sun making them highly adaptable to a wide range of light conditions. In particular, the martagon lilies are valued for part shade to part sun gardens.

Lilies are extremely useful for layering extra colour into the garden. They take up such a small footprint that they can be interplanted between existing perennials and shrubs where you could never shoe horn in a normal plant. But lilies are happy to be inserted into most spaces and will rise up between and above the perennials in your garden.

Lilium martagon ‘Manitoba Morning’ has rich pink flowers with yellow and burgundy spots.

Lilium martagon ‘Orange Marmalade’ has shocking tangerine orange petals that are narrower than other martagons and no spotting held on dark stems.

Lilium martagon New Dark Purple has luscious, glowing, shiny, purple-red turks cap-type flowers.

In my garden I have martagon lilies rising from between Hostaand ferns in part shade. They do marvelously, increase each year, and give an extra pop of colour in late spring and early summer after the spring fanfare of other bulbs and perennials has subsided.

Other beautiful species lilies are Lilium mackliniae, the shirui lily, with gorgeous, pink, nodding, bell-shaped flowers and L. regale‘Album’ with its pure white, fragrant trumpets with yellow throats. Both of these lilies bloom in summer.

Lilium mackliniae is a rare and distinctive species with downward-facing, bell-like blooms in white and pink.

Lilium regale ‘Album’ is the uncommon pure white form of this species trumpet lily with elegant white flowers with a yellow glow in the throat.

At Phoenix Perennials, we offer a variety of Lilium martagonand other species for pre-ordering through the summer and fall for pick-up or shipping in late September and early October. We offer additional lilies for pre-order in our Rare Summer Bulbs Pre-Order launching each year in December. Should supplies last, we may also have them available potted up during the gardening season.