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A graceful stem of ‘Eurydice’
blooms in our field. |
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Specializing in unique lilies
for your garden |
Here you’ll find lilies with petite, pendant flowers,
towering trumpets, and huge,
sumptuous blooms! We have
fragrant lilies, scentless
beauties, and treasures that
bloom throughout the months
of summer in a vast array of colors. We won’t limit ourselves to four primary colors for a store display...we celebrate the beauty and diversity of the genus Lilium!
We’re often asked, “What is your favorite lily?” We love them all, and one of our best and most popular customer favorites is ‘Silk Road,’ a great example of
what we strive for in garden lilies! It takes years to hybridize, propagate and thoroughly test these Orienpets, and we are thrilled that many of our varieties have reached the top of the North American Lily Society’s polls.
Our catalog goes to press before the end of the growing season, and only harvest will show how the lily bulbs “size up.” We expect to add some new varieties to our website in September, updating it again in early spring. Check our website, thelilygarden.com for our most current selection. Here you will find web-only varieties, hypogeal seeds, and the latest “sneak preview” varieties for connoisseurs!
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Judith rescuing lily embryos |
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Judith’s hybridizing involves planning crosses, studying pollens and chromosomes, growing, flowering, propagating, and constantly evaluating for garden persistence and reliability. It takes about 10 years from the time we select a promising new lily to its introduction, with a few extra years needed for the slowerpropagating polyploids.
Judith continues to pursue new breeding lines, with new
Orienpets like ‘Bell Tower’ and ‘Secret Message’. She also works to refine well-established
lines as the years show which of the “classics”—like Dr. Chris North’s
absolutely superlative ‘Ariadne’— give outstanding progeny, such as our new hybrid
‘Midsummer’s Eve.'
Judith will finish tucking the 2007
“lily babies” (Year 2020 introductions?)
into their test tubes just in time for the fall
harvest. Somehow, she also finds time to
grow 8 acres of lilies, manage the crop and
harvest, and pack all the orders!
Thank you for visiting our website
and exploring the beauty lilies have to offer.
We hope you’ll enjoy these beautiful plants
in your garden as much as we do!
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Catherine and Juliana van der Salm visit the field, pausing to pick Queen Anne’s lace and a few ripe berries near Lilium ‘Ice Caves.’
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Welcome
to The Lily Garden!
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We are delighted to share our website with you, full of
the best garden lilies available anywhere!
Here you will
find lilies to please every palate, including many of our
own hybrids that span the spectrum of flower size, color,
plant height, shape and form. Our own unique creations
are marked “ ,” short for Columbia-Platte
Lilies, our original business name. These wonderful lilies
are born and bred on our farm!
All our offerings have been
tested and selected specifically with the garden in mind–our
lilies are strong, persistent, disease-resistant, and above
all, beautiful! Because we grow them all ourselves, here
on our own farm, we photograph all our lilies in the field
to show you how they really look. For more than 25 years,
we’ve made it our mission to provide you with beautiful,
reliable garden lilies, and we absolutely guarantee
every bulb to grow and bloom.
Hardy lily bulbs
will return year after year with only the simplest maintenance
(see "Growing
Lilies.). Each year you can expect more
and more flowers to grace your garden with color, longevity,
fragrance,
and
beautiful
form.
Raising a crop
of lilies can be like rearing a family -- we're on call
at all hours of the day, and the demands are constant
but often unpredictable. We appreciate the patience of
our customers who understand that we can't always be
by the phone to take orders, especially when it is time to plant, irrigate, fertilize, hybridize, harvest...
We appreciate
every one of our customers, and we want to thank you
for your continued support of our company!
We hope you
enjoy looking through our own lily garden, and that you
will choose to add our fine plants to your garden, as
well. Enjoy the lilies!
Judith Freeman
&
Catherine
van der Salm
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 We are often asked if any
of our lilies attract hummingbirds, or if there are certain
lilies they prefer.
'Viva' is a favorite, as are 'Karen
North', 'Eurydice' and 'Rosepoint
Lace', and our local hummingbirds fight
over the 'Red
Velvet' territory in our fields every year! |
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