The fragrance of lilies wafting through your garden on a warm summer night is an unforgettable pleasure. Sniff 4 different, easy favorites. For zones 5-7S/9WC only.

For 2, 3, or more of each variety, order more samplers.

Enrich your summer garden with the lush color and fragrance of heirloom lilies! We’ll send 5 easy classics including our 2003 Bulb of the Year, tough and gorgeous ‘Black Beauty’. For zones 5-7S/9WC only.

For 2, 3, or more of each variety, order more samplers.

It’s not just an immortal movie, it’s a fabulous lily, too! Chocolate-bronze buds on tall, strong stems open to big, summery, amber-orange-copper trumpets that are swooningly fragrant. Vigorous and adaptable, 5-6 feet, mid-summer blooming, zones 5-8bS/10WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

Though absolutely gorgeous – with 15-40 turk’s-cap flowers of dark raspberry narrowly edged in silver – ‘Black Beauty’ is even more prized for its wonderful vigor and long life in all sorts of gardens. In fact, you’ll often hear it called “indestructible.” (It’s even lily-beetle resistant, researchers say.) The first NALS Hall of Fame lily and our Heirloom Bulb of the Year for fall 2003, it’s a concensus choice for one of the 20th century’s very best. Sturdy 5-7 foot stems, mid-summer, zones 5-7S/10WC, from Holland. Chart to compare. To view our five-year-old clump of ‘Black Beauty’ in front of the Old House Gardens barn, click here.

Graceful, easy, and inexpensive, this wildflowery classic has been a Top 5 favorite in recent popularity polls of the North American Lily Society. Bred by Oregon’s legendary Jan de Graaff, it has all the charms of a wild lily, with slender, lemon-yellow, turk’s-cap flowers sprinkled with charming poppy seed dots. 4-5 feet, zones 4-8bS/10WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

Just 2-3 feet tall, this pixie lily has glossy, red-to-orange flowers that are bright but never gaudy. Native to Siberia, it thrives in steamy Charleston, too, and though it can be short-lived, it self-sows eagerly. Aka L. tenuifolium, Siberian lily, early summer, 2-3 feet, z. 4-8aS/10WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

From the Siberian province of Dauria, this tough, bright, very early lily brings a splash of summer’s brilliance to iris season. Also known as L. umbellatum, it was grown in Japanese gardens for centuries and used to breed a host of similar, now mostly extinct Victorian favorites known as L. x elegans, L. x thunbergianum, and L. x hollandicum, as well as Isabella Preston’s famous Stenographer hybrids. Best in acidic soils, 2 1/2 feet, zones 4b-7bS/9WC, from Oregon. Chart to compare.

Splash grenadine into a tall, icy glass of lemonade, add a cherry, and you’ll be pretty darn close to the sunrise-in-Key-West coloring of ‘Excelsior’. The first time it bloomed here, we felt as if we’d stumbled into a big summer party. And it’s intoxicatingly fragrant. Party on! Oriental, mid-summer blooming, 4 feet, zones 5-7S/9WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

This easy, heat-loving beauty looks like a very tall, very slender Easter lily and smells even sweeter. It bears up to 12 narrow trumpets atop 5-7 foot stalks in late summer and seed-pod candelabras all winter. Introduced in 1880 from Taiwan (where it’s now endangered), it didn’t catch on till re-introduced by E.H. Wilson in 1918. Some say it’s hardy in zone 5, but we guarantee it for 6b-9S/10WC only. In the right spot it self-sows happily and can bloom from seed its first year. From Georgia and Michigan. (For more rich fragrance for warm climates, see Roman hyacinths and antique freesia.) Chart to compare.