That is the only way to do it.
Okay, I definitely need an eye exam – I misread this as “gelded” and was thinking that was too severe a punishment just for weedwhacking eight lilies. :eek:
I sneer at the OP! MY lilies have a proper raised bed all to themselves, built of heavy wooden posts which successfully deflect even the most vicious of weed-whackers. They are safe, completely safe from the hired lawn monkeys. Hah!
Too bad they weren’t safe from the field mice who set up a colony in my bed and over the course of the winter ate every damned bulb. cries I think I’m going to rename lilies ‘wallet-buster flowers’.
And I sympathize with the problem of getting a competent lawn/garden service. Maybe there just aren’t enough people out there who do care what’s in their beds to support good ones? I know most of my neighbors have borders filled only with unkillable daylillies and such.
I don’t have a lawn service. I am my own lawn service. But I put up SOME sort of barricade around anything I don’t want weedwhacked, because my husband cannot be trusted not to kill my saplings and such. In fact, I’m not sure he didn’t kill my avocado tree sapling on purpose. Grrrrr.
I’ll see your mice and raise you deer. At least I assume it was deer. Wednesday I got the mail, and noticed that the lily flower buds were filling out nicely. Thursday I got the mail and noticed that every one of them had been neatly cut off, between the bottom of the flower bud and the first set of leaves. The good news is I have some very health looking green plants.
A deer will top a whole planting of lilies in short time. It makes you wish the lily buds were highly toxic to eat.
Think how useful those OZ sleeping poppies would be around the perimeter of your garden.