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For the longest, best floral display from an Easter lily, choose plants with mostly closed flower buds.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Carefully remove the anthers from your lily's flowers as soon as the flowers open to preserve the pure white color of the petals.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Bright yellow anthers bear the pollen for the lily flower. These anthers should be removed to prevent yellow stains on the flower petals, tablecloths or clothing.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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The pollen in lily flowers can't be cleaned off the white petals once it falls from the anthers.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Cats can create a mess in the garden with their digging. But once the garden is full of plants, a cat may be more inclined to rest in the shade rather than dig in the garden.

Courtesy Meredith Seaver, USU Extension

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Did you treat yourself to a beautiful potted Easter lily or receive one as a gift this spring? Here are some tips for helping your plant to look its best and then how to enjoy that beauty again in your landscape for years to come.

Your Easter lily should do well indoors if you put it in a place with plenty of bright indirect light. Choose a location away from cold drafts and heat vents, fireplaces, etc., where dry heat could shorten its life. Water your lily thoroughly but only when the soil feels dry, and never leave the pot in standing water that drains from the bottom of the pot. If the pot is in a decorative cover, make sure you remove any water that collects in the bottom of the cover after the soil has had a chance to drain.

The flowers on your lily will last longer if you remove the yellow anthers at the center of the blooms when they first open. Individual flowers can be removed as they wither. Once you’ve enjoyed your lily indoors and the blooms have faded, you can discard it or move your lily to a sunny window until you can plant it in your landscape after the danger of frost has passed.

When you’re ready to add your lily plant to your landscape, remove the old flowers but not the leaves. Choose a well-drained spot with at least a half day of bright sunshine. The ideal spot would have a few hours of shade during hot summer afternoons. Make a planting hole about twice as wide as the pot your lily is growing in but only deep enough to position the top of the bulb about 6 inches deep. Backfill around the root ball, water deeply and then add mulch over the top of the soil.

Your lily may die back after planting. If this happens, cut down the top of the plant. Sometimes a lily will bloom again before dying back, but it’s more common for the bulb to remain dormant. A layer of extra mulch each fall will help your lily go through our cold winter. Remove the extra mulch once you see new growth in the spring.

The lilies that are sold in stores at Easter time are grown under carefully controlled conditions so they will be in bloom in the springtime. You can expect your landscape lily to bloom in mid-summer.

I’ve seen someone’s cat in my garden this spring. It looks like it’s been digging in the beds and doing its business. What can I do?

The loose, level soil of a garden bed can be too attractive for a cat to resist, and once a cat discovers your garden, it will want to return again and again, even year after year.

Once watered in and soil settled …

You’ll want to take your rake and see if you can rake out the droppings and remove them from the garden. After that, you’ll need to cover the beds with something to discourage the cat until you’re ready to plant your garden. A weed mat, newspapers weighed down with rocks or boards, chicken wire or even strategically placed tomato cages can do the job. Anything that makes it hard for a cat to dig and then comfortably sit will do the job.

Since you know you’ve had a cat doing its business in your garden, don’t forget to wash your hands after working in the garden, even if you wore gardening gloves. Also, thoroughly rinse the vegetables that you harvest from the garden.

It’s especially important to protect your garden once you’ve planted your seeds, so that cats don’t dig and scratch in your seedbed, turning up and scattering your seeds. Once you have your veggies up and growing so there is less open space in your garden and the soil has been watered and settled, your garden will be less inviting as a litterbox, but you may find that cats still come to rest in the shade of your taller plants.

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