Sweet Reminder

For certain Angelenos, the lure of lilacs is almost indescribable. Here we are in a city festooned with bougainvillea, our gardens fat with exotic gardenias and plumerias. Yet what we long for sprawls against grandmother’s wooden fence in Michigan or Pennsylvania. It’s a humble thing, “this bush in the dooryard, with delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,” as Walt Whitman put it. But it remains, for many of us from the East and Midwest, a cherished, fragrant symbol of spring.

Alas, L.A. isn’t noted for its lilacs. Our winters are too warm and too kind for a shrub that needs cold and snow to launch its spring explosion--or so we’ve been led to think. But in the 1940s, a UCLA plant biologist named Walter Lammerts began trying to propagate a lilac suited to our conditions. Working for E. Manchester Boddy, owner of the estate that became the La Canada Flintridge-based Descanso Gardens, Lammerts crossed two varieties to create hybrids that require no winter freeze.

Over the years, Lammerts and his successor, horticulturist John Sobeck, developed 22 so-called Descanso hybrids, which thrive in climate zones 8 and 9--which include much of Southern California. All 22 now grow in Descanso’s 1-acre lilac garden, though some have lost their named identities. Nevertheless, among the collection’s 500 shrubs, there are 12 labeled hybrids--from the violet ‘Lavender Lady,’ which is 53 years old, to deep pink ‘California Rose’ and snowy ‘Angel White.’

Tough plants, lilacs can live hundreds of years without much fuss, reaching 15 feet tall and growing nearly as wide. They bloom in shades of blue, rose, purple and white, in single and double forms that range from faintly to staggeringly fragrant. Although there are several thousand cultivars to choose from, for our gardens the best hail from Descanso. Several are available at local nurseries, and they look and smell like Syringa vulgaris, or common lilacs.

Like many plants, they are easy to please if you understand their nature. In southeastern Europe, for instance, they grow wild on rocky hills. Our related hybrids want good drainage too, and they particularly like hillside slopes and mounded beds. They appreciate lots of sun (at least four to six hours daily) as they grow. In order to bloom well, they need their winter rest, which you can give them, as Descanso does, by stopping all watering in about mid-September and forcing the plants to go dormant. They will be leafless for a while, but usually by early March leaf and flower buds start popping and sweet blossoms reward you. Plant several shrubs in different spots and you may have blooms for a month.

Descanso’s lilac experts, a passionate volunteer group that includes Joyce Kjarsgaard, Bonnie Compeau, Valerie Banks, Linda Wall, Pat Sample and curator Rudy Schaffer, have other pointers for success. They suggest planting lilacs away from trees, shrubs and lawns that require water year-round. To “lighten” soil and speed drainage, amend what you excavate from your planting holes with equal volumes of peat moss and commercial potting mix. Cultivate patience. Your shrubs may take three to four years to flower, which isn’t long if they live for decades. They should, with proper care.

Except in winter, Descanso volunteers water lilacs weekly for 20 minutes with automatic sprinklers. On hot summer days, they also spray plants to cool them. Blooms are encouraged by feeding plants, beginning in their second or third year, with blood and bone meal in January and cottonseed meal in early May. In July, the volunteers might add some low-nitrogen fertilizer (0-10-10 or 6-10-10 formula) to plants that haven’t bloomed well. In summer, they scatter 2 inches of oak-leaf mulch around the plants to cool roots, reduce weeds and boost nutrients. In late winter, they rake the mulch away to discourage moldy trunks. Finally, after snipping blooms as they wither and pruning dead or diseased branches, the volunteers hang up their clippers at the end of June. New blooms are forming then--next year’s harbingers of spring.

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Where to find Descanso lilac hybrids

Descanso Gardens, La Canada Flintridge, spring and fall plant sales, (818) 949-4200

Armstrong Garden Center, Pasadena, (626) 799-7139

Green Thumb Nursery, Canoga Park, (818) 340-6400

H & H Nursery, Lakewood, (562) 804-2513

Syringa Plus Nursery, www.syringaplus.com