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Lilacs – Dwarf Varieties Are Best

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Published January 8th, 2010

Everyone loves the old-fashioned fragrant lilacs that grace so many old farmyards and your grandmother’s lawn. At this time of year their heavy perfume is distinctive and irresistible. Sentimentality helps us overlook their shortcomings in the modern landscape, but the fact remains that Syringa vulgaris (Old-fashioned purple lilac) is too large for most yards, suffers from powdery mildew, has an ungainly shape, and takes way too long to get established by today’s standards. The new generation of dwarf lilacs has made the old-fashioned common lilac a lovable dinosaur.

Modern landscapes present many more opportunities for the incredibly poplar “Meyeri” dwarf lilac varieties. These superior hybrids flower profusely at a much younger age, don’t attract pests or diseases (including powdery mildew), tolerate heat and drought especially well, and bombard you with exotic fragrances. They easily adapt to shearing into a large mounding shape in the five to six-foot range, making them perfect for filling corners in foundation plantings.

Dwarf Lilacs bloom profusely with small tubular flowers, a hummingbird magnet. The best ones are readily available in tree form, offering a lollipop-shaped compact specimen tree perfect for small spaces. Here are our favorite varieties:

Miss Kim Lilac – the most popular Lilac today, grows more tall than wide (approximately six feet tall and five feet wide) with large purplish-lavender fragrant blooms.

Dwarf Korean Lilac (Palibin) – This unique lilac grows more wide than tall, forming a spreading mound. Small light blue-pink, fragrant flowers are abundant along the stems.

Tinkerbelle Lilac – This new introduction is a hybrid selection grows six feet tall and wide. The pinkish buds open to deep wine-red flowers with a distinctive spicy-sweet fragrance.

All these varieties are easy to grow, preferring full sun all day for the best bloom. Annual feeding with Plant-Tone boosts the blooms nicely. They should be sheared annually just after blooming, cutting back to just above the fork created by the previous shearing.

GoodSeed Farm is offering a free Miss Kim Lilac plant to the first 1000 mothers who come to our annual Country garden Mother’s Day party, beginning Friday May 8th through Sunday May 10th. Mother’s Day hours are 8 AM-8PM Friday and Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM Sunday.

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