Most gardeners like lilies that are dependable and reasonably easy to grow; they want to be sure of a certain splash of color or of a particular quality of charm or dignity in their border or landscape picture. Fortunately, the majority of our lilies fall into this category of dependability.

There are quite a number, however, that present a certain challenge, that demand of the grower something in the way of special knowledge, skill and care. As it happens, most of these less easy-going lilies are so startlingly beautiful that the real gardener is only the more intrigued by their relative difficulty.

Some lilies do not easily adjust themselves to the garden because they are capricious wildings which come from natural environments hard to simulate on the small plot. Others are difficult because they react badly to lifting and shipping. Still others are subject to various diseases under garden conditions.

The three diseases which cause most of our difficulties are mosaic, basal rot, and botrytis. Botrytis blight, however, is so easy to control with Bordeaux mixture that it is fallacious to call lilies affected by it difficult. Mosaic is a virus that is spread by sucking and chewing insects, chiefly the melon aphid. Basal rot is a soil-borne fungus that causes the bulb to rot and the entire plant to go to pieces.