Gardens: Heaven scent

Getting a lily to flower in its first year is no problem. Only when you have brought it successfully through its second year can you award yourself a merit star. A new lily bulb, bought from a reputable supplier, will already have the embryo of the following summer's flowers wrapped neatly away in its heart. You have to be extraordinarily cack-handed to prevent that flower bursting out.

If it fails in successive seasons, think about drainage. This is the most potent cause of problems. Lilies hate damp lying round their roots. But they also hate drying out, which seems a contradiction in terms. The most successful groups in our garden grow through the arms of euphorbias on a sloping piece of ground. The slope helps drainage; the euphorbias provide shade over the roots. By mulching thickly with mushroom compost, the underlying soil can be kept well fed without gumming up the drainage.

Even so, out of pots, I don't find them easy. I was bewitched when Lilium duchartrei first came into bloom alongside some ferns – both planted at the same time in the new garden. The flowers were everything I had hoped for: extravagantly reflexed, white heavily stippled with deep purple, ginger anthers ranged round a long, exploratory style, topped by a purple, three-cornered stigma. Last July they came up again, not showing any increase, but at least still there. This year? Zilch. Why? My first dark thoughts always go to underground slugs, which love lily bulbs. As yet, I've not scrabbled around the sticks that mark where the lilies went in. I want to pretend they are just resting and will return next year. Some hope.

At least the soil in our new garden is generally more lily-friendly than the clay of the old one. Heavy clay soils are difficult to deal with and most of us balk at the boring work of excavating heavy land. But there is an answer. Abandon the land and grow lilies in pots instead. Here, you can easily adjust the drainage by adding sharp grit to the planting mix. There is another advantage too. Many lilies, such as the golden-rayed lily (L. auratum) and the shade-loving L. speciosum, grow best in acid soil. You may have alkaline soil, but in a pot you can give lilies all the acid they need by using a special ericaceous compost.

Though most lilies prefer a soil that is just the acid side of neutral, L. martagon with turks cap flowers of brownish purple, prefers lime. Other popular lilies like the white-trumpeted Regale lily, yellow L. pyrenaicum and L. henryi are not fussy and will put up with whatever they are given.

As to position, lilies like their heads in sun (dappled or otherwise), but their feet in shade. In a pot, this is not easy to arrange. But if you choose a pot made out of a well insulated material, such as wood or clay, you will keep the compost cooler than if you plant in a trendy galvanised metal bucket. Spread a layer of pebbles over the surface of the compost. This, too, will help to keep it cool and moist.

The best time to plant lilies is supposed to be late September, when flowering has finished, but the ground is still warm. Put into welcoming soil, lily bulbs will make roots and sort themselves out ready for the big push in spring. In practice, this is not usually possible. If you order lilies now from bulb catalogues sent out during summer, the bulbs will turn up in mid-November.

The difficulty with spring planting is that bulbs may have shrivelled away some of their health and vigour. Unlike daffodils, they have no outer protective coat. You must buy them before they start sprouting. In spring you too often see them spurting forests of sickly white shoots from a garden centre's box of wood shavings, desperately trying to keep to the timetable devised for them by nature rather than some godforsaken marketing department.

Bulbs such as these are not good buys. A plant needs to concentrate on one thing at a time. Roots first, shoots after, when they can be sustained by the roots. Shoots springing from dry bulbs are living on capital and there is no future in that. But well kept, spring bought bulbs suit a gardener's timetable and at least you are less likely to lose them before they even bloom. Most nurseries – Avon Bulbs for instance – show a few lilies such as the white martagon (£5.50 each), the Madonna lily (£5 each) and the charming species L. cernuum (£3.50 each) in their autumn catalogues, but the bulk of more ordinary garden kinds appears in spring catalogues. This last spring, Avon's list included 'Black Beauty' (£5.50 for 3), 'Casa Blanca' (£4.50 for 3) and 'White Tiger' (£4.50 for 3). I buy at both times, driven by whim. Both seasons have dangers, different but equal.

'Casa Blanca' has been a great success in pots on the terrace because it has such a gorgeous scent. It's not happy in limey soils, so in a pot you can give it just what it needs – a nicely acid compost and plenty of water. It's just out now, about 85cm tall, five pure white flowers clustered at the top of each stem, the broad petals slightly reflexed, making a wide-faced flower of great charm. The insides of the petals are slightly puckered into little white thorns. The smell seems stronger at night, but this is often the way with white flowers.

The shorter types of lily – up to about 120cm – look superb in tubs. By short, I do not mean dwarf. "Pixie" lilies (bred in the US) are loathsome things. They never get beyond 30-40cm and look squat, congested and ugly. A big tub with 7-10 bulbs in it will give a better effect than three tiddlers with three bulbs in each. In small pots, lilies are more likely to dry out in summer and freeze in winter, neither of which is good for them.

Cover the bottom of the pot with broken crocks, gravel or chopped bracken. Add a layer of compost (coir compost did well in lily trials in the Northern Horticultural Society's garden at Harlow Carr, Yorkshire). Set the bulbs at least half way down the container so they can be covered with 10cms of compost. Stem rooting lilies will need deeper planting.

If you plant in autumn, water the tub and keep it inside a cool shed until spring. If it is too big to move, cover it with a dustbin liner to keep out rain and cold. Once the lilies are above ground and growing strongly, they need regular feeding. I use Osmocote slow-release fertiliser, sprinkled on top of the pots in spring. Or you can use a liquid fertiliser such as Miraclegro once every two weeks.

Most lilies (except martagons) adapt well to life in pots, so there are difficult choices to be made. This is a good kind of difficulty: more than 350 different kinds of lily are listed in the current Plant Finder (Dorling Kindersley, £14.99). The sensible way would be to start with lilies awarded an AGM (Award of Garden Merit). That would cut the choice down to 20 and lead you to easy-to-grow varieties such as 'African Queen' (out now – a chalky rich apricot), the double yellow 'Fata Morgana' as well as 'Casa Blanca'.

But the AGM gang does not include 'Citronella' (£4.60 for 3 in Avon's catalogue this last spring), a graceful lily with flowers held at right angles to the stem, yellow petals reflexed and freckled with black. It has excellent ginger-coloured anthers on long filaments, like lizards' tongues looping out for flies. Nor will you find 'Netty's Pride' which I have grown this year for the first time. It's been in bloom since the beginning of the month, five blooms on each dark stem, the oxblood colour in the centre of each flower contrasting weirdly with the ivory white tips to the petals. Sadly they do not smell. Scent is important. Some lilies are positively narcotic in the intensity of their perfume. In this respect the best I have grown are white L. regale and 'African Queen'. Both are addictive.

Avon Bulbs, Burnt House Farm, South Petherton, Somerset, TA13 5HE (01460 242177; avonbulbs.co.uk)