Care-free bulbs: magic lily

One of the toughest and prettiest flowers around, the magic lily is a beautiful addition to your garden -- whether it appears accidentally or not! Here are some tips for planting and growing magic lilies:

Picture this:  less than a week after a late-summer rainstorm, 0.6-metre-tall (two feet tall), leafless stems of lilac-pink, fragrant, lily-like flowers appear like magic. If it sounds like a sorcerer has been at work in your garden, now you know why a couple of the common names of lycoris are magic lily and surprise lily.

• These tough, flowering bulbs make an elegant addition to the woodland garden, where they fit in nicely with other shade-tolerant perennials.
• If you plant them near deciduous trees, they receive sun when they need it in early spring to grow leaves, but will be protectively shaded in late summer when the flowers appear.
• The straplike leaves of magic lily take up quite a bit of space in the spring garden and often become floppy and disheveled with age. They need the same spring-to-summer growing schedule as daffodils and tulips, so leave the foliage undisturbed until it yellows.
• Consider combining them with large, leafy perennials, such as hostas or ornamental grasses, that can hide their aging leaves and fill the gap until flowering time.
• They also look fine growing in rows, such as along the edge of a lawn.
• The fragrant blossoms make excellent cut flowers.

In many areas magic lilies are called "pass-along" plants, because they multiply and are handed over the garden fence from neighbour to neighbour, but bulbs can also be obtained from mail-order nurseries in the fall.

• Magic lilies don't like to be disturbed, so decide where you want them to grow, plant them and leave them.
• Space the bulbs 20 to 25 centimetres (eight to 10 inches) apart in 15-centimetre-deep (six-inch-deep) holes.
• A group of three to five bulbs make a nice initial showing and will eventually fill in.
• Patience is necessary, because magic lilies do not bloom the first, or sometimes even the second, year after planting.
• In times of serious drought, you may need to encourage magic lilies to bloom by slowly watering them with a drip hose in late summer until the ground is saturated.
• After eight or nine years, clumps of bulbs may become crowded and need to be divided. This is best done in early summer just as the leaves are dying back.
• These tough plants are virtually impervious to pests and diseases.

Magic lily has a close relative, spider lily (Lycoris radiat), which is hardy only to Zone 8.

• Popular on the West Coast, spider lilies have thin, rosy red, curled-back petals with long, spidery stamens atop straight green stems.
• The variety 'Alba' blooms in white.
• Like magic lilies, spider lilies send up flowers following a rain shower in late summer or early fall.
• However, the dark green foliage of spider lilies grows from fall to spring and completely disappears by summer.
• Another relative is golden spider lily (L. aure), which has eight-centimetre-long (three-inch-long) orange-yellow blossoms at the end of the season.
• Also hardy to Zone 8, it can be grown in a container.

A beautiful and care-free flower, the magic lily is perfect for the amateur gardener. Add it to your backyard garden or use it to decorate and accentuate an area of your yard. Time to get gardening!