My Bedford, New York garden is filled with gorgeous, bright, and fragrant lilies - I hope you've seen some of them on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48.
Lilium is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants that grow from bulbs, all with large prominent flowers. The beautiful blooms can be enjoyed as cut flowers in an arrangement or growing in the garden - some at two feet, and others as tall as eight feet. I love lilies, and have been growing them for years - Asiatic, Martagon, Candidum, American, Longiflorum, Trumpet and Aurelian, Oriental, and various interdivisional hybrids.
Here are more photos of the gorgeous lilies growing in my gardens this week, enjoy.
Many of my lilies are planted in my large flower cutting garden just behind my main greenhouse. I also have lilies growing along the winding pergola, outside my Winter House kitchen, in the sunken garden behind my Summer House, and in the formal garden outside the front of the greenhouse. Lilium is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants grown for their very showy, often fragrant flowers.
Lily flowers are large and come in a range of colors including yellows, whites, pinks, reds, and purples. These plants are late spring- or summer-flowering. They are native to temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere.
The true lilies are erect plants with leafy stems, scaly bulbs, usually narrow leaves, and solitary or clustered flowers. Rose lily flowers are pollen-free.
The lily has a diversity of symbolism throughout the world. In fact, different colored lilies represent different things. While the white lily represents purity, the spotted tiger lily represents pride or confidence. In Japan and China, lilies are a traditional symbol of good luck, whereas Greek lore associates the flower with motherhood.
Lily flowers consist of six petal-like segments, which may form the shape of a trumpet, with a more or less elongated tube. The segments may also be reflexed to form a turban shape, or they may be less strongly reflexed and form an open cup or bowl shape.
Here’s a beautiful orange lily growing in my flower garden. Lilies like to have their “head in the sun, feet in the shade,” so plant them where they can get at least six hours of full sun per day.
Lilies also prefer cool soil – below 60 degrees.
When it comes to water, lilies prefer moist soil but not wet feet. Choose a well-drained site, preferably not too dry.
My head gardener, Ryan McCallister, always cuts a selection of beautiful flowers to decorate my home. I love to enjoy the gorgeous blooms in my kitchen, where I can see them every day. When cutting flowers, the best time to do it is early in the morning before the sun and wind have a chance to dry the flowers. One can also cut late in the evening after they are rehydrated.
When selecting flowers, always consider appearance as well as condition. Cut the stalks when the blooms first open.
And before bringing them indoors, be sure to gently pull those anthers off of each flower. Pollen is notorious for staining flesh and fabric. Removing the anthers prevents any pollen from getting on the flower petals, which can eat away at the delicate flower parts and shorten the life of the blooms.
When handling lilies, it’s a good idea to wear gloves and clothes you don’t mind getting dirty. If you happen to get a pollen stain on your clothing, do not rub! Instead, reach for a roll of tape and use the sticky side to gently dab the area – the particles will adhere to the tape.
Lilies have one of the longest in-vase lifespans of any cut bloom and the flowers will continue to mature after they’ve been cut.
The cultivation of lilies dates back to 1500 B.C. Many of the bright colors and forms of lilies were found on botanical expeditions during the 1800s in Asia. The Chinese and Japanese lily species were exported to Europe and hybridized to create new varieties that are popular today as cut flowers and as garden plants.
I love these bold pink lily blooms marked with white stripes on each petal.
These lilies line both sides of the center stone footpath in my sunken garden behind the Summer House. Some are already blooming beautifully in lovely shades of yellow, cream, and white.
These lilies have stronger stems than some of the other lilies in my gardens. They also aren’t as tall, so they don’t need individual staking, but we sometimes support them with twine along the entire row to keep their large heads from drooping.
Lilium superbum is a species of true lily native to the eastern and central regions of North America. Common names include Turk’s cap lily, turban lily, swamp lily, lily royal, or American tiger lily. These flowers grow to a nice size, and each one has six luscious petals. The petals have a sleek curve and appear to reach upwards, with the anthers pointed down.
This Turk’s cap-type lily has white blooms with raised, dark red spots and warm yellow-orange centers.
These lilies will continue blooming through mid-August – I am looking forward to enjoying many lily arrangements in the weeks ahead.
And look at the formal white lily garden in front of the greenhouse. Soon, this bed will be bursting with gorgeous white lily flowers. I will share more on this garden in a future blog.
Pruning chores around my Bedford, New York farm continue with the large hornbeam hedge in front of my main greenhouse.
The English hornbeam, Carpinus betulus, is a fast-growing deciduous tree - it can grow about four to five feet per year. From a distance, it appears solid, but light streams in through the leaves providing a pleasing and dappled space. I like to maintain my hornbeam hedge using a traditional European style of pruning, so it has a nice, sculpted appearance. This means, it’s crucial that the hedge is pruned regularly, so it doesn’t look overgrown and unruly.
Enjoy these photos.
This tall hornbeam hedge grows in the parking lot directly in front of my main greenhouse. It is quite pretty here, but serves primarily as a privacy and noise barrier from the road. This photo was taken before any pruning began – it has so much lush new growth.
Carpinus betulus is native to Western Asia and central, eastern, and southern Europe, including southern England. Because of its dense foliage and tolerance to being cut back, this hornbeam is popularly used for hedges and topiaries. Hornbeams are often confused with the common beech because of their similar leaves; however, the hornbeam leaves are actually smaller and more deeply furrowed than beech leaves. The leaves are deciduous and alternate, with serrated margins.
Looking inside the hedge, the hornbeam has pale grey bark with vertical markings.
Here’s another view – all of the hornbeams are planted in a very straight line just a couple feet apart. One can see the sturdy branches and how they grow outward and slightly upward.
The hornbeam grows pretty quickly – about four to five feet per year, so it is important to trim and sculpt it regularly. Hornbeam is also very hardy and frost resistant, which is good in this area.
We trim the hornbeams every year around this time. We use a traditional English style of pruning, which includes a lot of straight, clean edges. A well-manicured hedge can be stunning in any garden, but left unchecked, it could look unruly.
The crew does most of it by hand. Everyone uses Japanese Okatsune shears specially made for trimming hedges. These shears are user friendly, and come in a range of sizes.
It is more time consuming this way, but it is also more exact and provides straight clean cuts – very important when sculpting formal hedges.
Pasang keeps the shears close to shoulder level. This allows the best control. He also holds the shears closer to the base of the blades.
Phurba works from the ground with his Japanese hedge shears. He stops every few minutes to assess his work.
Pasang works from the ladder. Here, one can see what has been cut and what hasn’t.
Here’s a view looking up – the bottom has been trimmed, but the top has not.
It doesn’t take long for the ground to fill with clippings – and this is just from the front of the hedge.
Once the front face is done, our Hi-Lo is moved in, so Pasang could trim the uppermost sections. The Hi-Lo is very useful, and because the hedge is accessible from the parking lot, it always comes in handy for this task.
Domi works from the ground raking up all the clippings, which are loaded onto a truck or the back of a Polaris and then taken to the compost pile where they will decompose for next year’s garden dressing.
Pasang is lifted above the hedge, so he could safely trim the top from the cage of the Hi-Lo. The top of this hedge section is trimmed perfectly level using our STIHL battery powered extended hedge trimmer.
From above looking in one direction, all the tops are trimmed flat.
Here is what Pasang still has to prune – it’s a big difference, but this shows all the growth from the past year. Pasang is carried from section to section very carefully. This is also a good time for him to evaluate the pruning from another angle, and to decide where adjustments are needed.
Here is a side view showing how the front is sculpted with the taller sections protruding just a bit. It is now beginning to look very straight and square.
And here is the finished hedge – trimmed beautifully. It looks great. Next to be trimmed is the long European hornbeam hedge that runs along the back of my Summer House and Winter House. What pruning chores are you doing in your yard? Share with me in the comments section below.
It's berry picking season once again and the blueberries at my Bedford, New York farm are ripe for the picking!
Plump, juicy, and sweet, with vibrant colors from red to the deepest purple-black, blueberries are one of nature’s finest treasures. I love to use them for jams, jellies, and pies, but they’re also wonderful with cereal, in pancakes and cobblers, and of course, in handfuls on their own. Low in fat, yet packed with vitamin-C and antioxidants, it’s not surprising they’re one of America’s favorite fruits to eat.
Yesterday, we started picking lots of delicious blueberries. Enjoy these photos.
My blueberries are all from these bushes located near my Flower Cutting Garden and large Equipment Barn, next to my grove of quince trees. The posts are the same 18th-century Chinese granite uprights I use for the clematis pergola, my apple espaliers, and to support my raspberry bushes. For most of the year, these healthy blueberry bushes are left open under this large pergola. And just before the bushes are laden with fruits, we place a net over the pergola to protect the developing berries from all the birds.
The netting covers the blueberry bushes on all sides and on the top. I use a durable plastic bird netting, which can be reused every season for several years.
Here is a closer look at the netting we use. The holes are flexible enough so if a bird does manage to get in, it can also get out.
These sod staples are used to keep the netting taut and well-secured, but still easy enough to remove for harvesting. They are placed every few inches to ensure there are no openings for curious ground critters.
The netting is pulled taut to the ground and then secured. The sod staples are great because they also allow for easy access to the bushes when it’s time to harvest.
Here’s my housekeeper, Elvira, just starting to pick the first blueberries of the season. She is using two-pint wooden berry picking baskets made from natural flat wood slats.
These bushes are so full! Bunches are hanging from nearly every branch. I grow many blueberry varieties, including ‘Bluegold’, ‘Chandler’, ‘Darrow’, ‘Jersey’, and ‘Patriot’.
Blueberries are about five to 16 millimeters large with a flared crown at the end. They are pale greenish at first, and then reddish-purple and finally dark purple-blue when ripe for picking. When harvesting the fruits, select plump, full berries with a light gray-blue color. A berry with a hint of red is not fully ripened.
Blueberries were once called “star fruits” by North American indigenous peoples because of the five-pointed star shaped crown.
They are also covered in a protective powdery epicuticular wax known as the “bloom”. These berries are just right for picking. Blueberries are high in fiber, high in vitamin-C, and contain one of the highest amounts of antioxidants among all fruits and vegetables.
And, the blueberry is one of the only foods that is truly naturally blue. The pigment that gives blueberries their distinctive color is called anthocyanin – the same compound that provides the blueberry’s amazing health benefits.
Blueberries are perennial flowering plants. They are classified in the section Cyanococcus within the genus Vaccinium. Vaccinium also includes cranberries, bilberries, huckleberries, and Madeira blueberries.
The day was cloudy, but quite pleasant with temperatures in the 70s, so Elvira set out to pick as many blueberries as she could before the temperatures soared into the upper 80s.
Standard blueberry bushes grow about six to 10-feet tall. New shoots grow from the crown under the soil. At the base, blueberry shrubs have multiple canes growing directly out of the soil in clumps. The canes or branches are smooth and thornless. These bushes have done so well here at the farm. I am always so pleased with how prolific they are. A single mature blueberry bush can produce up to six thousand blueberries per year.
Blueberry bushes have glossy leaves that are green or bluish-green from spring through summer. The leaves are ovate, in an irregular oval or slightly egg shape that is wider at the bottom than the top. Blueberry leaves can also be harvested and dried for teas.
There will be lots of berries to pick for the next several weeks. We check the bushes every day from now through August.
Unfortunately, many blueberries also fall to the ground. All those picked are carefully inspected – only the best are saved.
Blueberries are among the most popular berries for eating. Here in the United States, they are second only to strawberries.
This first harvest was very successful. How do you like to enjoy blueberries? Let me know in the comments.
And here’s a sneak peek… in a few weeks, we’ll have many, many peaches to pick from my orchard – I can’t wait.
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