Gardening

A gentle flower, lilac is like a foretaste of summer, swooning scent and soft colour. Gerry Daly examines this lovely plant.

Sweet lilac
Lilac is often relegated to hedges and boundaries along with other tall bushes such as forsythia, escallonia and weigela. Sometimes it just peeps out of a laurel bank on its own. It has a suckering habit and can make an elongated thicket of stems. Often rooted suckers were passed on to neighbours. And it makes a great cut flower for the house, a few stems complete with foliage simply popped into a vase.

It tends to need more space that can be provided, and this can result in pruning. Cutting back the stems tends to simply encourage more woody growth and the flowering is reduced, or completely absent, until such time as the lost stems are replaced. So pruning lilac is largely selfdefeating. Instead let this lovely bush grow as it wants. It makes a tall bush or small tree about three or four metres tall with most or all of its flowers on top. To be seen to good advantage it has to be seen from a little way back, another advantage of having more space available.

Lilac is native to warm parts of south east Europe and grows really beautifully in France and other warm countries, but not in hot dry localities. It does well here when the summer is not too cold or wet, flowering well the following year. After a dull summer, it tends to be leafy and not flower much. The ordinary common lilac, Syringa vulgaris, is the most popular. It has pale lilac flowers, tiny tubular individual flowers massed in pointed clusters at the tips of shoots. There is natural variation of colour, some seedlings lighter in colour, some dark. Over the centuries, especially in France, many named varieties have been selected for darker or lighter colour, and double-flowering, which makes the flowers look fuller and larger.

'Katherine Havemeyer' has double flowers, pale purple-lilac, very well scented; 'Belle de Nancy' is purple pink; 'Vestale' is white and of graceful shape; 'Volcan' is dark red-purple; 'Firmament' has pink buds that open lilac-blue; 'Marechal Foch' is a lovely dark red-purple kind. 'Souvenir de Louis Spaeth' us reddish purple and a reliable kind. 'Charles Joly' (shown) is double, reddish purple and late-flowering. 'Maud Notcutt' is white with single flowers, while 'Mme Lemoine' is white and double flowered. These named varieties are generally grafted onto the common Syringa vulgaris, which throws up suckers and if these are neglected and allowed to grow, they often take over from the grafted top and the common variety prevails.

Care for the environment: Burrowing bees

It is very common for burrowing bees, or solitary bees, to appear in a garden where there is a dry bank with bare soil. Ironically, this often happens in gardens where weedkillers have been used to keep the soil weed-free. These little bees lead a fascinating existence, tunnelling several centimetres into the ground to make a small chamber where they gather a match-head size ball of pollen and honey on which one egg is laid. A network of these tunnels is eventually built. And the mother bees can be seen hovering near the entrances. Watch for these creatures and if you see them, leave them alone.

Using Garden Tools

Wire hoops
It is an awful nuisance to have to place wire hoops around plants to hold them up, but in some cases, it is essential. Wire hoops are semicircular with a leg on either end. These are tucked in around plants and the spike ends stuck in the ground. They are easier and quicker to put in place than canes and easier to remove. They also last for many years and are not as noticeable, but they must be put in place before the plant flops over!

This month in your Garden

• plant out summer bedding in good conditions
• spray apple trees for apple scab disease
• remove rose suckers as soon as they appear
• increase lawn mowing, during rapid growth
• plant out courgettes and sweet corn
• lawn seeding for a new lawn
• apply lawn weedkillers now for best results
• spray roses against blackspot disease
• plant gladiolus corms in flower borders
• prune early-flowering shrubs as soon as they finish
• apply lawn fertilizers, if not already done