Lily-of-the-valley cultivars are beautiful, not so invasive

The sassy enchantress ‘Rosea’ shows off scads of dainty pink cups, but care must be taken when purchasing this cultivar for there is great diversity. Some plants sold under this name – ‘Rosea’ – sport a barely noticeable wisp of pale pink coloration, while others have strong mauve/pink tones. [See second photo at left.]

‘Dorien’ is of typical height but with larger dancing flowers. ‘Bordeaux’ (12 inches) and ‘Fortin’s Giant’ (18 inches) improve on the favorite with greater stature, longer stems and larger dangling bells. ‘Flore Pleno’ (12 inches) displays double blossoms, and ‘Prolificans’ enhances this flowering pleasure even more by blooming with a wild abundance of single little bells.

More and more of the newer cultivars sport yellow. I fell in love with golden-edged ‘Hardwick Hall’ when I visited its namesake a few years back and then couldn’t pass up the outstanding, larger Convallaria with its cheeky moniker of ‘Cream da Mint’, also with golden edges.

But one of the latest of my prized possessions in this collection is ‘Fernwood’s Golden Slippers’, a sport of ‘Cream da Mint’. Emerging in early spring is radiant chartreuse-yellow foliage, which darkens somewhat in summer, yet never turns totally green. It glows like handfuls of yellow glowsticks when backlit by the sun.

Betty Earl is one of eight garden writers who blog regularly at Diggin' It. She's the author of “In Search of Great Plants: The Insider’s Guide to the Best Plants in the Midwest,” is one of eight garden writers who blogs regularly at Diggin' It. She also writes a regular column for Chicagoland Gardening Magazine and The Kankakee Journal and numerous articles for Small Gardens Magazine, American Nurseryman, Nature’s Garden, and Midwest Living Magazine, as well as other national magazines. She is a garden scout for Better Homes and Gardens and a regional representative for The Garden Conservancy.

Editor’s note: To read more by Betty Earl, click here. For more Monitor gardening, see our main gardening page and previous posts of Diggin' It [they're there if you keep scrolling down]. Both of these have new URLs, so we hope you'll bookmark them and return. Want to be notified when there's something new in our gardening section? Sign up for our RSS feed.

Previous

1 | 2