2021 Preservation Efforts

THE LILAC ZONE

2021 was another good year for making progress in preserving rare lilacs. Along with my grafting buddy, I have another great friend that has been assisting in the grafting process, by helping to procure scions from a public collection near her residence. Between everyone in this grafting trio, we were able to successfully graft 11 more rare lilacs! I have also been able to leverage my connections with folks at some of the public gardens in order to assist other gardens in obtaining cultivars that they would like to add to their collections. This year I was able to help introduce 3 cultivars to collections by procuring and delivering them.

Thankfully this year my plan to visit some private gardens and to take some steps in preserving some of the rare lilacs in their collections came to fruition. I was able to visit two private collections and with the generous offer of the owners, harvest suckers or rooted branches of over 20 lilacs!

I also had the opportunity to pay it forward by gifting 7 different lilac cultivars to other collections! All in all, I felt really good about my accomplishments this year!