Garden Layout - Plants - Lilies
I'm a comparatively recent convert to lilies, having grown my first one in 1998, but I'm becoming totally smitten with them. I usually grow them in pots, so that I can position them where I want on the patio to ensure the heady fragrance is wafted around me on summer's evenings. I find they thrive in a well-drained, rich compost; I use a mixture containing 50% MP compost, 25% perlite and 25% loamy topsoil, and they respond well to a weekly feed.
This is the biggie, the Regal Lily that started my affair with them. Lilium regale is one impressive flower. It grows to about 1.2 metres high and carries 15-20 saucer-sized flowers that literally ooze fragrance. Each flower lasts for about a week, with a total flowering period spanning 3 weeks in July. I've not quite figured out how its thin, strap-like leaves manage to feed such huge blooms, and the flower head is usually to heavy for the stem to bear, and so support with a cane is essential to keep the plant upright.	Lilium regale
Regal Lily - close-up	These flowers really have to be seen to be appreciated. They start as 150mm long, ribbed 'cigars' carried on stalks from the main stem. Througout June, the plant drinks and enormous amount of water, a couple of litres per day and the 'cigars' get fatter and fatter. And then the first ones break open overnight, and their musky scent hits you as soon as you step into the garden. Pure white throats, tinged with pink, leading to dusty yellow stamens. If you haven't got one of these in your garden, go out now and buy one!
This is a pleasant enough lily that I picked up as part of a bargain pack - 89p for 3 corms, no names, but only one of the three actually flowered in their first year. This one reached a finished height of about 450mm, and was grown in a 225mm pot with its two companions. The peach colour of the quite open flower is very attractive, and by flowering after the Regal Lily above, it wasn't overlooked, it had its few days of glory. :~)	Lily

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