Look forward to lilacs

Before the lilacs of this spring become simply a fragrant memory, why not think about the varieties you want to plant in autumn

- Christopher Lloyd

WHILE admiring the colour and scent of lilacs in spring, did you make notes about the varieties you saw and liked so you could order them for autumn delivery? In case you did not, I shall jog your memory.

First, however, allow me to remark that lilacs in general take poorly to life in containers. Even as youngsters they grow far more vigorously in the open ground and you will therefore do better to order them for autumn delivery than to buy them from a garden centre now.

Also, just before I start waxing lyrical, let me also remind you that, having flowered, lilac bushes are apt to make exceedingly dull features in the summer garden. Yet there is no need to resign yourself to this state of affairs. Being typically of a stiffish habit, they make admirable supports for climbing shrubs. Summer and autumn-flowering clematis, in particular, make an ideal follow-on to the lilacs’ own season.

A common parent

The common lilac Syringa vulgaris is the sole or most important parent of all those varieties that impart the heavenly warm fragrance that speaks to us of summer and of our childhood. We can enjoy this scent as early as mid-April in a decent spring (a rare commodity, these days).

‘Madame Charles Souchet’ is one such variety. Hopefully described by the nurserymen as ‘pure sky-blue’, it is of course, nothing of the kind. Lilacs are, by definition, lilac, not blue, and they are none the worse for that.