How to Grow Beautiful Lilacs Easily

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I am in love with all the different colors of lilacs.  I think they are beautiful!  If you see a lilac on this page you can’t live without – feel free to click the picture and it may just take to you the page with this plant for sale.

Lilacs are beautiful with their colorful flowers that are heavy in fragrance. 

Shades of purple flowers tend to be the most popular, but lilacs also come in white, yellow, magenta, blue and pink flowers.

These beautiful flowers are perfect for cutting while they are in bloom and placing in vases around your home.

Lilacs are often confused with the butterfly bush (I did it for years!), which is easy to do.

While the butterfly bush is a shrub only, lilac varieties are both in shrub and tree form.

The butterfly bush grows faster, adapts more easily to different soil types and the flowers bloom from mid-summer to fall.

Lilacs, on the other hand, are more cold hardy and they flower mostly during the middle of spring.

Planting Lilacs

Finding the Perfect Location for Your LilaCS

When you are trying to figure out where to plant your lilacs, make sure to keep in mind lilac sun requirements as well as their soil requirements.

Sun, partial sun or shade?

Lilacs should be planted in full sun.  They need six or more hours of sunlight each day.

So while looking around your yard, deciding where to plant your lilac bush, make sure to keep an eye on anything that might cause your lilac to be in shade – such as a large tree or the side of your house.

Then, make sure to avoid those areas when planting your lilac.

Can lilacs grow in the shade?

Lilacs can grow in the shade or in partial sun, but they won’t flower or will only flower a little.

Since you want the beautiful, fragrant flowers, you do want to make sure they are planted in full sun, where they will get at least 6 hours of sun each day.

Best soil for lilacs

Lilacs need decent soil conditions.  

You will want to work in some compost or other soil amendments before adding your lilac bush.

Lilacs also need soil that drains well and they like it to be neutral or slightly acidic.

Growing Lilacs from Cuttings and Off Shoots

While you can grow lilacs from seed, most often lilacs are grown from cuttings and offshoots.  If you decide to grow from seeds, just know that it can take a really long time before it blooms and the plant that you grow may look nothing like the mother plant.

Many lilac varieties grow many offshoots.  These are little plants around the lilac bush. 

You can take these mini lilac trees and bushes and dig them up to transplant them to a different location. 

You will find they are still connected to their mother plant, so you will need to cut this root connection when you dig them up.

Make sure to keep as much of the root system attached to the lilac as possible when transplanting so your lilac has a better chance at success.

If you want to grow a lilac from cuttings, this tends to have a fairly high success rate.

The best time to take cuttings from a lilac is in spring – anytime from early spring to late spring.

Many, many people have success just taking cuttings and shoving them into the ground.  

If you want to be assured you will have success, you can always use a rooting hormone and apply this to the base of your cutting before placing into some soil.

How to transplant lilacs

If you decide you need to transplant your lilac for any reason, chances are good that they will do well after being transplanted.

Keep the same things in mind when transplanting your lilacs as you do when deciding on the best spot to plant your lilac in the first place.  These are making sure it is in full sun and that it will have good draining soil.

You’ll also want to make sure not to prune your lilac before moving it.  The best time to transplant your lilac is in early spring before your plant comes out of dormancy.

Make sure to water your lilac well after transplanting.

When do lilacs bloom

Most lilacs are not continuous blooming lilacs but instead are considered to be one-time blooming.

All this means is that it booms in the spring and then doesn’t bloom until the following spring.

Exactly when your lilac blooms will depend on your gardening zone as well as the variety of lilac you have.

Syringa vulgaris is the most common variety of lilac.  This variety blooms at the end of May.

You will find most varieties of lilac bloom anytime between early spring through early summer.  If you have several different varieties of lilacs you can time the bloom times so you have several weeks of beautiful blooms.

While the lilac is first going into bloom and has small buds you may notice they don’t have much smell, but once they bloom the rich aroma will be released.

Many people claim they are able to smell lilacs in bloom a block away.  The medium to dark purple varieties are said to have the most fragrance.

Fertilizing lilacs

In general, you don’t need to worry about fertilizing your lilacs.

They might bloom better if you do fertilize them, but it totally isn’t necessary to fertilize them.

If you want to fertilize them, you can use bone meal.  Bone meal will add phosphorous to the soil, but won’t add nitrogen.  Too much nitrogen can cause your lily to not bloom well.

Pruning lilacs

At the end of the season, cut off any dead blooms.  If you don’t cut the blooms off, seeds will form and your lilac may only produce seeds the following year.

I hope you found this helpful.  

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