The lovely lily is right at home in the temperate Northwest

Zounds! My head's whirling with the sumptuous beauty of late-summer lilies. Colors of the warmest sunset hues, topped with fragrance never decanted into perfume bottles. Best of all, lilies settle down and multiply — once you plant them, they're yours to swoon over year after year.

Lilies enliven container gardens, tuck beautifully into perennial borders, make wonderful long-lasting cut flowers and add summer interest to the "waterwise" shrub border.

Take some time now to observe them in gardens and catalogs, because fall's a good time for planting your choices. They'll often arrive in garden centers just after Labor Day, along with other bulbs like daffodils, to bloom next summer.

A true lily is a bulb

Many plants borrow the name "lily," but the only true lilies grow from bulbs.

Bright Asiatics bloom first, in late May and June, followed by tall fragrant Trumpets and Orientals in July and August. They'll grow from 2 to 8 feet, depending on type. Asiatics usually hit 3 feet; a stand of elegant Trumpet 'Copper King Strain' in my garden tops 7 feet in its third year.

Great for containers

If your garden perches in containers, lilies will suit just fine.

When planting, choose a container big enough to offer each lily enough space. You could plant three Asiatic lilies in a container 16 inches high and 12 inches across. The late-summer lilies have bigger bulbs and would need containers 24 inches tall and about 16 inches across. Plant them so that at least 6 inches of soil covers each bulb.

Since you'll be planting in early October, you could use a container freed from the summer annuals that go seedy by then.

Plant immediately upon receiving bulbs. Unlike other bulbs such as tulips and hyacinths, true lilies don't ever quite go dormant. You'll find them packed into protective material like sawdust to keep them from bruising during handling and shipping.

If they must be stored, place them — still in the packing materials — in the vegetable compartment of a refrigerator, never allowing them to freeze. Once a lily bulb dries out or freezes, growth stops. Don't worry about winter, though — ample soil in containers will protect them from cold spells.

Easy in gardens

Look around your yard now: Where can you visualize a soaring, colorful, fragrant grouping of lilies? Mark the spot for fall planting.

Bob Gibson, of B&D Lilies in Port Townsend, says lilies are easy to grow.

"If soil will grow weeds, it will grow lilies," he said. (We can only imagine lilies replacing dandelions!)

Good drainage is key. Plant lily bulbs 6 to 10 inches deep, depending on the size of the bulb, putting loose fertile soil above the bulb as well as below it. In the spring, when shoots appear, apply a balanced fertilizer such as a 5-10-10. Mark the planting location, because lily shoots emerge late in the spring and their spot can be mistaken for bare space.

Northwest ideal for lilies

Cool summers and mild winters west of the Cascades suit lily production admirably, with bulbs grown here shipped worldwide.

Growers in Washington and Oregon developed breeding programs yielding new colors and types of these hardy plants, including new interspecific hybrids like "Orienpet" combining Orientals and Trumpet.

An interspecific hybrid breeds two entities where the genus is the same but the species differs. One example in dog breeding would be the Goldendoodle, a combination of golden retriever and poodle with handsome features even though it's stuck with a name like a snack food.

Lilies get prettier names. I like 'Porcelain Doll,' cream with slight pink, and 'Conca d'Or,' a clear yellow and white.

Garden expert Mary Robson, retired area horticulture agent for Washington State University/King County Cooperative Extension, appears regularly in digs and in Practical Gardener in Northwest Life on Wednesdays. Her e-mail is marysophia@olympus.net.