Frequently Asked Questions

Most people grow lilacs for their beauty, fragrance and easy care.

Many people remember a beautiful lilac from some other part of their life with great fondness, and are looking to re-create that experience.

Others want a special plant to serve as a memorial or to honor a special milestone, such as a birth, wedding, graduation, or new home.

As a particularly resilient and cold-hardy genus, the lilacs are a great fit for northern climates. Aside from occasional pruning, they generally require little maintenance and can thrive in even the poorest quality soils (as long as they are well-drained and not too acidic). They are relatively fast-growing, and can fill in landscape spaces readily.

In addition, lilacs serve many valuable functions in the garden ecosystem. Their nectar reserves support butterfly populations and attract native pollinators. They also provide additional structure on the landscape, providing cover, perches and nesting habitat for many bird species.

As a general rule, we are open on Saturdays and Sundays, beginning Mother’s Day weekend and concluding on Father’s Day.  We are also open on Memorial Day.

For 2025, opening day is Saturday, May 10, and we will close for the regular season sales on Sunday, June 15.

NOTE: We will be CLOSED on Saturday, May 17, 2025 for a family graduation. Our sincere apologies for any inconvenience. We will re-open on Sunday, May 18, 2025 for our regular hours.

On Saturdays, we are open from 10am to 4pm. On Sundays, we are open from 12pm to 4pm. On Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, 2025, we will be open from 10am to 4pm.

We are also available by appointment in May/June, and in September/October.

Please note that our sales location and our home and farm are in different spots, so we are unable to serve you outside our regular hours without an appointment. On our sales days, we are open rain or shine.

For the 2025 season, we have over 40 varieties for sale.

We are constantly looking for new varieties to make available to you.

All the varieties we sell are hardy to Zone 4b and appropriate for the North Country (and many other communities). 

Unfortunately, at this time, we do not ship lilacs. A mail-order business has its own specifications and demands, and we are currently not set up to ship.

We encourage you to make a trip to see us if you are in the neighborhood, and, if you want to make us a destination, we are happy to help you find local accommodations and other things to do in this lovely part of the world.

We are near the Canadian border, the St. Lawrence River and the Adirondack Park. 

The short answer is yes, we do. The more complex and truer answer is that there is no botanical significance to the term “French lilacs.”

France has had a long history of breeding lilacs, and we sell many cultivars that were developed in France. However, when most people use the term French lilac, they mean a lilac with particularly showy blossoms. Those are most often due to double-petaling.

We sell many varieties of double-petaled lilacs, some of which were developed in France and some of which were developed in other countries.

Our sales location is 595 Miner Street Road in Canton, NY.

To find us, make your way to Canton, and then follow Miner Street Road from the center of town to our location, which is approximately 3 miles from the center of town on the left.

It’s a one-story brown building with a parking lot on the left side as you come from town. 

Lilacs are extremely adaptable and resilient plants. However, there are two conditions they must have in order to survive and thrive.

The first is ample sun. Lilacs require 5-6 hours of direct sunlight daily. Without it, they will not flower well and may be more susceptible to disease.

In addition, lilacs do not tolerate having “wet feet”, so well-drained soil is a must. Our summers are predicted to be increasingly rainy, so pick your driest spots for your lilacs.

Lilacs prefer neutral to mildly alkaline soils, and since many soils in the North Country are acidic, you may need to add a small amount of lime over time to keep your lilac happy. A simple soil test can help you determine if that is necessary.

Once you have identified your sunny, well-drained location, dig a hole that is about twice the diameter of the pot-size of your lilac.

When you remove the plant from the pot, you may notice that some long roots stick out beyond the hole you have dug. If that is the case, you can make little trenches to accommodate them.

Lilacs should be planted shallowly, so make sure that your lilac is planted at soil height. If you choose to mulch, do not mound the mulch around the stem/trunk.

Leave a ring of airspace around the stem/trunk to allow for good air circulation. 

Lilacs take 4-5 years to flower for the first time. If your lilac is flowering at the nursery, you know that it is old enough to flower.

Our plants vary in age from 1 year to 5 years of age, and it is sometimes hard to tell the age of a particular plant. The little-leaf and late season lilacs flower earlier in their lives than the mid-season vulgaris species.

It is not uncommon for plants to skip setting flowers the season after they have been transplanted, as they are focused on establishing a healthy root system that year.  

In addition, lilacs may not flower if they are not happy in their new location.

Be sure your lilacs are planted in a location that gets 5-6 hours of direct sun and has well-drained soil. As long as the soil drains well, lilacs can thrive in even poor quality soils.

However, a persistent lack of flowering in sufficiently mature specimens is typically caused by one of three things:

1) Too much acidity in the soil
2) Low phosphorous levels
3) Pruning too late

If you need to amend your soil, lime and rock phosphate are good choices and are consistent with organic production methods. Make sure that any pruning you do takes place within two weeks of bloom completion, otherwise you run the risk of pruning off next year’s blooms.