I know, at times, my garden looks full to the bursting point. But I'm not worried because one of my favorite gardening quotes reminds me, "...there is ALWAYS room for one more plant." I'm counting on that quote... because I'm planning a fairly large Lily order from Von Engelen in about 3 weeks.
Lilies are a fairly new group of plants for me... and they must be brand new for Oklahoma City gardeners because you see so few of them in gardens here. So I'm going to defer to Joseph Hudak, in "Gardening with Perennials Month by Month", for an educated comment: "Unique in blossom form, fragrance, height, and bulb type, the stately Lily has maintained a historical association with every culture of the North Temperate Zone for the past 4,000 years. As symbols of royalty, religion and purity, the clusters of sizeable and pleasing flowers have been given featured status in every art form for centuries."
Paraphrasing Hudak: "A joint effort of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society evolved standards for the current horticultural system of 9 divisions based on the ancestral or geographical origin and form of the bloom."
June flowering hybrids [Divisions 1, 2 and 3] are the Asiatics, the Martagons and the Candidums.
July blooming hybrids [Divisions 4, 5 and 6] are the American hybrids, the Longiflorums and the Aurelian or Trumpet hybrids. True species Lilies that bloom in this time frame include auratum, bulbiferum, lancifolium, pardalinum, philadelphicum, regale and superbum.
August blooming hybrids [Division 7] are the Oriental hybrids. Two species Lilies that bloom in August are henryi and speciosum.
Division 8 includes all hybrids not provided for in any previous division.
Division 9 includes all true, wild species and their botanical varieties.
My garden contains several Asiatic hybrids and they garner their fair share of attention from residents on their daily walks... and, surprisingly, from the big, burly contractors who occasionally perform maintenance. But reactions to the Asiatics pale beside the look on their faces when they see the six inch blooms on 'Muscadet' and 'Gold Band'.
I was surfing for info on the history and lore surrounding Lilies and ran across an interesting article on "The Symbolism of Lilies."
Type "https://symbolismandmetaphor.com/?s=LILIES" into Google... and you can read it too.
