"Why, of all things, are you working with lilacs?" has become the question from visitors for the past year or so.

The answer is straightforward. We want to know which lilacs we can recommend to the North Carolina nursery and landscape industry. In order to have that information, we need better knowledge than someone at a meeting saying "Aunt Bea had a beautiful lilac in her yard when I was a child and she lives down east." Too often Aunt Bea has moved on plus we have learned that anecdotal information and single plant replicates do not make for good research information no matter how many clues they may give us concerning which plants do well where.

Dependable information on lilac performance in North Carolina is hard to find for lots of reasons. However, thanks to support from NCAN and the generosity of some lilac producing wholesale nurseries like Bailey, Monrovia and Spring Meadow we hope to have some answers in a few years. As with other woody plants, putting together a collection of cultivars, finding dependable cooperators and then giving the plants time to grow all take time. Hopefully, we will have some suggestions to share in a couple of years but do not feel comfortable making recommendations now.

That written, I will share some observations: Growing lilacs in the mountains is not much of a challenge. Most cultivars and species do well here where we can count on some winter chilling each year. If provided with proper cultural conditions most will grow and flower dependably but do have problems with powdery mildew and borers. In the piedmont and coastal plain, the situation changes. USDA hardiness zone 7 and 8 performance, in addition to our screening for mildew and borer resistance, has been the focus of trials.

Lilacs that "look and smell like lilacs" are almost always Syringa vulgaris hybrids. Often these are called French hybrids because of work done at the Lemoine Nursery in the 1800s. A couple of vulgaris hybrids showing excellent mildew resistance for us in trials at Fletcher have been 'Albert Holden' and 'Wedgewood Blue' but both can be attractive to borers. 'Albert Holden' has a bicolor effect because the petals are purple on the inside and a silvery purple on the outside. 'Wedgewood Blue' is a pastel purple-blue.

Lilacs that sort of "look like lilacs" that we think have the most promise in the piedmont are a series of hybrids that came out of Descanso Arboretum in California. These allegedly need less chilling than French hybrids to flower dependably. The Descansos are generally Syringa X hyacinthaflora hybrids. We currently have 'Angel White,' 'California Rose,' 'Blue Boy' and 'Lavendar Lady' from this group in our trials. In general, plants in the hyacinthaflora group have flowered prolifically for us at Fletcher with a sweeter fragrance than the common lilacs along with good mildew and borer resistance. 'Blanche Sweet' was the most vigorous S. X hyacinthaflora cultivar in previous trials.

Also included in our trials are lilacs that have performed well in piedmont gardens for years. Syringa meyeri 'Palibin' and Syringa patula 'Miss Kim' have been dependable but are somewhat smaller stature shrubs with a slightly different, but personally pleasing, fragrance. 'Tinkerbelle,' a hybrid introduced by Bailey Nurseries last year, has 'Palibin' and S. microphylla 'Superba' as parents. The abundant deep rose (the publicity calls this color wine . . . more of a white zinfandel than a merlot) buds open to deep pink flowers with good fragrance. We're hoping 'Tinkerbelle' does well in Zone 8 but only time will tell. In the mean time, there is hope for lilac cultivars that will perform well across the state of North Carolina but results with woody plants take time.

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North Carolina State University