Transplanting Lilies

From The Gardener for the Prairies Spring 2000

Written by Brian Baldwin

Garden books have all the answers. Consult them and you'll find that almost every plant in the perennial border is best moved in early spring. Lilies are a rare exception. Here we're told to wait until the foliage has died back naturally in the fall. But books sometimes fail to consider the human perspective.

Springtime moves are simple. Long days and warm temperatures make it easy to get outside for that annual game of "musical perennials."

Fall is an entirely different story. While moving lilies in fall makes perfect sense from the standpoint of plant physiology, human psychology also weights into the equation. Physiologically, a lily's foliage will have shipped the maximum quantity of carbohydrate to the bulb by late fall, producing strong, plump bulbs. But daylight hours will have dwindled to the point where there's almost no useful evening light. Face it, after a day's work, dragging yourself outside after supper to dig around in the dark just ain't gonna happen! Miss a few weekends and before you know it, the bulbs are snug and forgotten under a layer of snow. They next cross your mind in spring when you see the delicate shoots emerging. Once again, you make a solemn vow that this fall you're going to move them for sure!

After three successive years of making this futile pact, I finally concluded that books were wrong! (? SK). Fall isn't the time to transplant lilies. It's a job best done in mid-summer when they're in full bloom. This eliminates most of the guess work, since at this point, the plants are at their maximum height, making it nearly impossible to make the mistake of planting the tall ones to the front of the border, the short ones at the back. It also affords a crystal-clear picture of concurrent bloomers. This nearly s those eye-searing color combinations lilies are capable of creating. In fall, no matter how carefully one does the job, when digging dormant bulbs at least one bold orange always manages to get itself placed directly beside the brightest pink. The clashing colors burn themselves into your retinas nearly as well as flashbulbs-blink quickly and the image reappears!

The maximum size of the plants in mid-summer is another advantage. When autumnal plants have shrunk to a mere fraction of their former selves, it's too easy to misjudge your space placement. Who hasn't heard the disheartening "crunch" of a spade slicing through the most expensive bulb in the bed? How it knows the price, I'll never know.

Spring is the only time I'd actually refrain from moving lilies. The delicate new shoot is easily broken, and once gone, the poor bulb has only two options: It will either die or spend an entire year below ground, depleting its energy reserves as it forms a new shoot for the following spring. All the while it's caught in a perilous game of Russian roulette. Without aboveground parts to warn of its existence, it can never quite be sure when a spade might suddenly come slicing down. Crunch! -The second most expensive bulb gone?

Certainly no plant will be thrilled at being dug up and moved in full flower, but if it's kept well watered and blooms are removed, almost any perennial will have recovered fully by the following season. One of the best gardeners I know says that the best time to move any perennial is when you have the time!

She's right! She doesn't pay attention to books either.

Brian Baldwin is with the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan.
Article submitted by Sue Kaul.

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