The fragrance of lilies wafting through your garden on a warm summer night is an unforgettable pleasure. Sniff 3 different, easy favorites (some possibilities are pictured here). For zones 5-7S/9WC only.

For 2, 3, or more of each variety, order additional 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 additional 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 Fall 2003 Bulb of the Year, it’s 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 a five-year-old clump of ‘Black Beauty’ in front of the Old House Gardens barn, click here.

Graceful, easy, and inexpensive, this wildflowery classic still ranks high in Lily Society popularity polls, and rightly so. 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. Although counterfeits are widely offered, true stock of this treasure has become virtually impossible to get. If we can, we’ll offer it again in 2013 and announce it in our email newsletter.

Just 2-3 feet tall, this pixie lily has glossy, red-to-orange flowers that are bright but never gaudy. Native to stone-cold 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, zones 4-8aS/10WC, from Holland. 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. Although counterfeits are widely offered, true stock of this treasure has become virtually impossible to get. If we can, we’ll offer it again in 2013 and announce it in our email newsletter.

This easy, heat-loving beauty looks like a very tall, very slender Easter lily and smells even better. 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. Georgia-grown. Chart to compare.

“No garden should be without it,” wrote Woodcock and Coutts in 1935 of this wild, martagon-like lily, echoing C.L. Allen of Boston who in 1893 ranked it as one of the dozen best lilies for American gardens. With 4-12 small, freckled, amber-saffron blooms in early summer, it’s early-blooming and happiest in light shade. 3-5 feet, zones 3-7aS/8WC, from Holland. Chart to compare. We may not offer this lily again in 2013. If we do, we’ll announce it in our email newsletter.