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| Photo Credit: Lane Greer |
| Color your garden with the reddish-purple flowers of ‘Frank Klager’. |
Common or French lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) are known and loved by anyone living in the cooler regions of the country. Their intoxicating fragrance can permeate gardens and indoor spaces when the plant’s lavender blossoms open in midspring.
Lilacs are easy to place in the garden. Most of them stand alone in the yard (sometimes at the corner of a house). They can also be placed in a shrub border or used an informal hedge. And then you can move some indoors in the form of wonderful cutflowers. | Add Photo to Journal |  | | Photo Credit: Lane Greer | | Enjoy the clean white flowers of ‘Madame Lemoine’ in a sunny garden. |
The plant’s individual blooms can be either single- or double-flowered, although both are borne in panicles about 6-8 inches long. Single flowers look simpler and more old-fashioned, whereas double flowers create a very robust look.
But not all lilacs are lavender. Though seen less often, blooms can also be white or pink. In fact, some of my favorite lilacs have magenta or reddish-purple flowers. ‘Frank Klager’ and ‘Charles Joly’ are cultivars with dark reddish-purple flowers. The petals of ‘Sensation’ are wine-colored with white margins, and a very nice pink form is ‘Katherine Havemeyer’. White cultivars with single flowers include ‘Angel White’, ‘Avalanche’ and ‘Mont Blanc’. For double flowers, plant ‘Beauty of Moscow’ or ‘Madame Lemoine’. If you want to keep with the more familiar lilac shades of purple, try ‘President Lincoln’ or ‘Yankee Doodle’ (both have single flowers). If you want double blooms, use ‘Adelaide Dunbar’ or ‘President Grevy’.
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