May is one of our most beautiful months. The hedgerows fatten once the hawthorn has flowered and cow parsley narrows the lanes. Our lightest months in early summer are also the season of some of our most flamboyant flowering shrubs, many of which eclipse their companions for a glorious flurry. Once-flowering roses and sweetly scented Philadelphus may only be with us for a moment, but they are worth it for that feeling of time slowing down.
In Russia, lilac grows wild on the fringes of woodland to spill into the sunshine. They can be a hungry neighbour in a mixed planting, but if you have the right place you will be happy you have planted one. This year I have promised myself that I will get to see a national collection, to pick a couple with just the right tone of lilac and grace in the branches.
Once it has had its moment, the common lilac is a scruff for the second half of summer, but in season there is nothing else like it. The foliage is pristine as the clustered buds swell. The best lilac is delightful for being made up of several tones, with a dark reverse to each bud and a paler interior so that the colour appears to lighten as the flowers bud, open and age. I prefer the single-flowered varieties, which retain a lightness in the panicles. The doubles are physically weighty and hardly seem necessary in a plant that is not shy of flowering.
Of the common lilac varieties, Syringa vulgaris ‘Maud Notcutt’ is a good pure white. I’d like to find ‘Massena’, which I once grew among creamy tree lupins at Home Farm. It has ruby buds and the flowers open a thundery purple. I have plans to combine it with a lilac, such as ‘Firmament’, and let them go together near the compost heaps. They will be planted in rough grass and the cow parsley allowed to seed among them. When they are grown I’ll bring whole branches in bud into the house to extend their season.
You should never be worried about plants that have a short season. But it is a good idea to only invite the best and then to know that you can live with them for the rest of the year after their flowers are long gone. For those of us with smaller spaces and where a good companion is an important criteria in a shrub, there are lilacs that are more light-footed. S microphylla ‘Superba’ is a delightful shrub of 6ft or so with well-mannered branches and roots. The flowers are like those of a larger lilac in miniature.
I’ve also been planting Syringa x josiflexa ‘Bellicent’ in clients’ gardens and found this to be a very superior thing, forming an open, arching shrub with plenty of air in it. The rose-pink flowers are in elongated sprays, each individual flower appearing to be dripping from the branches.
You cannot begrudge such a flower for only being with us briefly. Plant a clematis at its base to cover for the late summer and let yourself enjoy the moment.
Get growing
Resilient groundcovers such as Symphytum ibericum or S ‘Hidcote Blue’ are good companions for lilac’s hungry root zones.
Email Dan at dan.pearson@observer.co.uk
