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Welcome to our Head Gardener’s Journal

In this monthly column, we will share technical aspects of our work and also keep you up to date about ongoing projects. If there is any topic you might want to hear more about, please ask during your next visit!

Managing Lilacs

Lilacs are a great asset to the garden in late spring, flowering abundantly.

The lilac grove in mid-May. Syringa vulgaris ‘Souvenir de Louis Spaeth’ (left), Syringa x persica, Syringa vulgaris ‘Comtesse d’Harcourt’, Syringa josikaea, and Syringa x prestonii ‘Helen’(right)

Gardens can, however, be unpredictable, and we’ve suffered years with hardly any flowers at all. A flowerless lilac is rather boring, so we do our best to keep them happy!

As soon as they have finished flowering, we dead-head them and feed them with Vitax Q4. 

Dead-heading the lilacs
Dead-heading the lilacs
Feeding with pelleted Vitax Q4

We rejuvenate them by taking out some older stems at the base, thus reducing congestion. They can be lightened further by inside-out pruning in the winter: removing some smaller branches inside the shrub.