Wednesday, June 05, 2013

SPREAD THE LOVE - dividing lillies

With a new property I am spending about 1/2 of my time on my large new garden beds and 1/2 of my time weeding, pruning and otherwise getting a handle on the existing flora.
My idea was to spend all of my time on my new beds, and aside from maintenance, leave the existing beds until next year.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Not likely as it turns out.
I just cannot walk past something every day when I see how it could look better.

Let us take the above portion of the south garden as an example.

The Thyme I moved into the Alpine garden where it will fit in better with the overall dry look.  
The Dianthus I have left for now until I can see what colour it is
Ditto for the Peony, it will all depend on the colour, so I must leave it until it blooms.
The random plants are likely weeds, but I am best to wait and confirm and the Iris need to show me their colours before I decide where they will live on.

The Lilies on the other hand, they clearly needed to be divided - and the sooner the better.  
 Just look at that big clump!  It was quite easy to gently tease them apart.  The plants that were having to grow out to the side and then up will be particularly happy with the change.
From one clump taking up only one square foot I separated out about 10 good sized plants (and a couple of very small ones) which will fill in to take up much more space.
 There now, that is much better.  

Bigger at the back, smaller at the front.
Maybe I should have waited until I understood what colour they are, but if I need to move them again I can.  Lilies are easy that way.

Now they have room to breathe.

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Sharing with Outdoor Wednesday

2 comments:

  1. I've got lilies to divide, too. Thanks for the tutorial.
    Happy Gardening!
    Lea
    Lea's Menagerie

    ReplyDelete

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