Green Thoughts

Once upon a time there was a gardening book club which offered a wide variety of gardening books, produced by a variety of independent publishers, back when such things had not been gobbled up by various conglomerates. And among my favorite of their offerings were books of essays about gardening. This is how I discovered the likes of the great Henry Mitchell, as well as Eleanor Perenyi and Katherine White (wife of writer E.B. White). I've learned more from reading their essays than I ever learned from illustrated "how-to" books, and wish the Garden Book Club was still in existance.

I've been reading Eleanor Perenyi's 1981 book Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden (Random House), and though not exactly encouraged, am amused to find in her essay about lilies, "Christopher Lloyd, who writes a learned gardening column in the English magazine Country Life, once put his finger on the single valid objection to growing modern hybrid lilies. They are, he remarked, the world's most expensive annuals. That is a slight exaggeration. Annuals they aren't, but many could be called biennials, which comes as a shock to those who believe what they read in books and catalogues. 'Naturalizes easily' is a well-worn phrase, and if you live where the lilies were grown originally--in the Pacific northwest--it may be true. For the rest of us, it isn't. The June-flowering Asiatics can confidently be expected to multiply. The Aurelian trumpets and August-flowering Oriental hybrids, in my experience, do not...." She goes on to explain why.

But since I recently complained about how my favorite Casa Blanca lilies--which is an Oriental hybrid--bloom one year and then vanish forever--it's comforting to learn that it's not me, it's the critter itself. As she says, "The cost of lilies is relative, even that of the short-lived ones. Certainly it is more economical to pay $2.35 for, say a Connecticut Lemonglow that will endure and increase than to lay out the same sum for Golden Splendor, a trumpet I have never kept for more than three years--not to mention squandering $4.95 for Empress of India, which in my garden has been a biennial. But look at it this way: A florist sells the Orientals for $5 per bloom. That means that the bulb you paid between $3 and $5 for is giving you about $75 worth of flowers. This isn't, in fact, how I calculate the value of lilies. Such a show of beauty can't be measured in the value of lilies."

Comparatively speaking, the price of lilies has actually decreased--White Flower Farm offers Casa Blanca at 3 for $10.95, which is $3.63 per bulb. I don't know what that is in 1980 dollars, but surely that means that even though they perform as annuals in my garden, they're even more of a bargain in terms of cost vs. pleasure. Plus, if you buy bulbs rather than cut flowers, you have the added pleasure of watching the plant grow and the anticipation of the buds becoming flowers. I hope next year I can afford half a dozen--or even just three.