When I was much younger and had very little life experience under my belt, I lapped up elegiac poetry. I am pretty sure that many bookish teenage girls did the same thing before the advent of 24/7 texting. Elegiac poetry also paired nicely with the hunger pains engendered by the tea and strawberry yogurt diet that I occasionally favored in college. I can say from experience that when it comes to wallowing in misery, there is absolutely nothing that compares with reading Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” at three am after breaking up with someone whom you thought was the love of your life. The fact that the time you spent reading “In Memoriam” was longer than the total time you spent in the company of the lost love only makes things worse.
I don’t have the inclination for elegies much anymore, but the blooming lilacs in my garden remind me of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Walt Whitman’s beautiful elegy to Abraham Lincoln. The first stanza says it all:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Whitman never mentions Lincoln’s name, but does allude to the passage of the assassinated president’s coffin as it traveled by train from Washington, D.C. to its final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. The image of lilacs speaks of spring, beauty and the persistence of memory. When I go to Central New York State in the summer, I see lilac bushes hugging the sides of old farmhouses, in what used to be called dooryards. In many cases, the plants have persisted for decades, flowering long after the men or women who planted them passed from the Earth.
Lilac, like its springtime companion, forsythia (Syringa species and hybrids), appears nondescript for fifty weeks every year. And the shrub has the benefit of attractive heart-shaped leaves, its full-time allure is still limited.
For about two weeks in mid spring, however, lilacs are glorious, combining exquisite flowers, gorgeous color—including blue, purple, blue-purple, pink, white and yellow–and ravishing fragrance. It’s enough to make you want to stage a festival to celebrate them, which they do in Rochester, New York, every year during the first week of May. Highland Park, a Frederick Law Olmsted-designed masterpiece, is home to Rochester’s formidable lilac collection, which draws thousands of visitors every year at lilac time.
Rochester is a long way from the mountains of southeastern Europe, where Syringa vulgaris, the common lilac, originated. It was probably introduced to northern and western Europe in the sixteenth century and it caught on. The species may not have the showy panicles of modern varieties and hybrids, but its alluring fragrance attracted admirers. Considering the array of foul smells that confronted the average European at the time, it’s no wonder that lilacs grew popular.
We in North America probably first imported lilacs during the colonial period. That great gardener, Thomas Jefferson, installed the shrubs at Shadwell, the plantation where he was born, and at Monticello. Clearly, he knew a good thing when he saw and smelled one.
Modern lilac breeding owes much to the Lemoine family of Nancy, France, who bred and sold plants from 1849 through 1960. Three generations of Lemoines were responsible for introducing over 200 cultivars, most of which are still obtainable. Victor Lemoine—1823-1911– the family patriarch, also gave the world the first double-flowered lilac. His oeuvre includes gorgeous, voluptuous doubles, like the purple ‘Alphonse Lavallée, introduced in 1885 and awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit (AGM) in 1893; the pinkish purple ‘Claude Bernard’, introduced in 1915; and ‘Miss Ellen Willmott, a double white variety, named for the great English gardener, and introduced in 1903. The Lemoines brought out many fine single varieties as well. Even now, lilacs from the Lemoine era in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as “French lilacs,” because of the family’s preeminent place in the lilac breeding world.
Of course, lilac breeding continues and every year the array of choices on the market grows larger. Before you invest, however, make sure you can provide your lilacs with the right conditions. To produce those magnificent blooms, lilacs need either a dormant period–often about eight weeks–of winter temperatures at or below forty degrees Fahrenheit or, for those in warmer climates, several months of real or artificially induced drought in the summer. Lilac fanciers in climates that do not meet those requirements should either look for hybrids and/or species that are adapted to local conditions or grow similar plants, like the so-called “California lilac” or Ceanothus.
Full sun, which means at least six hours of direct sunlight per day, is a must, as is well-drained soil. Lilacs tend to get “leggy” if not pruned, reaching ever higher to catch the sun and producing flowers only at the tops of the branches. If your shrub is completely out of control and you don’t mind missing a year of blooms, cut the whole thing to within a foot off the ground in February or early March. Otherwise, do the same thing to one third of the oldest, largest stems. By the end of three years, the plant will be completely rejuvenated. Add color underneath the shrub by installing various spring-flowering bulbs, followed by summer and fall annuals and perennials.
Local nurseries and garden centers often stock several lilac varieties. If you want a more comprehensive selection, try Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery, 13101 E Rye Rd, Avalon, WI 53505, (608) 883-2221, http://www.songsparrow.com.