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gardenfanatic2003

Is this enough sun?

gardenfanatic2003
17 years ago

Is 4 1/2 hours of sun (1pm - 5:30pm) enough sun for lilies?

If not, can you recommend some other plants that would do well in that amount of sun? They need to be at least 3 feet tall.

Deanna

Comments (6)

  • tjsangel
    17 years ago

    Since it is afternoon sun I'd say go for it. Much more intense than morning sun. All you can do is trial and error and see what happens. I think they'll be fine.

    Jen

  • hld6
    17 years ago

    Hi Deanna,

    That's plenty of sun - even if it were morning sun. But, know that many lilies lean toward the sun and more importantly direct their blooms toward the sun. If your garden bed is along your house or the east border of your yard this works great with afternoon sun. The blooms will point into your yard with few blooms pointing toward your foundation or your neighbors. Sorry neighbors! :) If it's a border garden on the west side your neighbors will love you since your blooms will face them.

    Trumpets are especially bad for this. I have lilium regale along the west side of my house that gets only afternoon sun. They get 6' tall with a large number of big beautiful blooms. I'm sure the view is stunning from my neighbors house!!

    -Helen

  • leslie197
    17 years ago

    Gardenfanatic,
    I am no lily expert, but I do grow a lot of them. I have considerably less that ideal conditions, having a low-lying yard of heavy compacted clay.

    Out of necessity, I grow lilies on both the east and west side of the house, where none of them get a full days sun. As Tjsangel said the west side is hotter. Right now I have mostly Asiatics on the east side, and orienpets on the west. Both are doing fine.

    I find that Black Beauties (an old Oriental variety) does fine on both sides, even on the more northern ends. I also have some trumpet and oriental lilies (including some more BBs) on the south side of the house in bright light, but deciduous shade. These also grow well, but lean heavily towards the sun. Leaning is the main problem I have in all my partial shade locations.

    Now when I say that they do well, I do not necessarily mean that they spread as well or are as floriferous as they could be - but they live and bloom and increase somewhat.

    In the very few full sun locations that I have that are dry enough for lilies, growth and expansion is greater. For the shadier areas I just by a few more lilies to fill in and the overall effect is quite spectacular. As far as I am concerned lilies are a good fairly inexpensive source of large blooms, color and height in partial shade. LOL

    My apologies to the regulars here - pictures have been posted before. Hopefully a picture is worth a thousand words....

    On the west side notice the hosta right next to the red asiatics. The pale yellow one is an orienpet.

    {{gwi:196939}}



    On the east side - Asiatics with Variegated Solomon's Seal and Cinnamon ferns

    {{gwi:196944}}


    {{gwi:196945}}



    These 2 Black Beauties are grown in no sun, but bright light - have been there about 5 years and each had more than 50 blooms this year.

    {{gwi:203446}}

    Trumpet lilies (facing south) in shade - leaning heavily but blooming well - have grown in height since this picture taken a few years ago and I had to limb up the tree to make more room!



  • gardenfanatic2003
    Original Author
    17 years ago

    Leslie,

    Beautiful pictures! Love that pale yellow Orienpet! What's the name of it? And what's the name of the lemon yellow lily (an Asiatic maybe) in the other picture?

    Deanna

  • alina_1
    17 years ago

    Leslie,
    Please post the pictures of your garden as many times as you want :0))))! You are such an inspiration to everyone here!
    I wish Helen will post pictures of her garden someday... Her posts are always so informative.
    Thank you, ladies!

  • leslie197
    17 years ago

    Thanks Gardenfanatic & Alina_1, I appreciate your comments. I love posting pictures, but I'm not sure anymore if people like it or not, as I know it is hard for dial-up people to load the strings filled with photos.

    As for the names of the lilies, the pale yellow Orienpet is Honeymoon bought recently from Dutch Gardens. The Asiatics are old, old, old, and I have no idea what their names are now or if I ever knew.

    I tend to plant a lot of "collections" of lilies and sometimes real cheapies. Anytime I see something that looks healthy I buy - sometimes I'm lucky and sometimes not. Occasionally things just pop up & surprise me, probably those small less than blooming size cheapies!

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