Trees and bushes with pink, white, and purple flowers

Lilac Collection

Burn Family Lilac Collection
April

With its bountiful clusters of flowers, sweet scent, and heart-shaped leaves, the lilac joyously proclaims spring’s arrival in gardens up and down the East Coast. The Burn Family Lilac Collection celebrates this favorite American garden shrub in all of its glorious forms, colors, and scents.

Lilac lovers have flocked to the New York Botanical Garden to see and smell these charming flowers since 1896. The 2016 expansion of this historic Collection showcases antique specimens as well as new disease-resistant lilacs, tall tree lilacs and dwarf lilacs, and flowers that smell sweet and others that are spicy. Early, late, and even reblooming lilacs and specimens selected for their autumn color ensure that this garden boasts interesting sights and smells long after its initial spring blooms.

Real-time bloom tracking

Breaking Bud Dormancy

Flowering

Full Bloom

Post-Peak Bloom

Lilacs

Additional Information

Lilacs

While New York springs start in fits and bursts, the arrival of the lilacs (Syringa spp.) is a sure sign that spring is in full swing! Sweet-smelling common lilacs (Syringa vulgaris), hyacinth lilacs (Syringa × hyacinthiflora), and double-flowered French hybrids (Syringa oblata × Syringa vulgaris) bloom from mid-April through early May, with a peak usually around the last week of April. Spicy-scented Asian lilacs, such as Korean lilac (Syringa pubescens) and Meyer lilac (Syringa meyeri), arrive slightly later, with a peak around the first or second week of May.

You can learn more about specific lilacs and find them on the map on our Plant Tracker!

Bloom Calendar

Lilacs

Dig Deeper

Our fragrant and fantastic lilac collection features 437 individual plants, together representing 138 different species, hybrids, and cultivated varieties.

While many of our specialized plant collections feature flowering plants placed elsewhere around the Garden, you can only find these delightfully scented flowers growing in the Burn Family Lilac Collection adjacent to the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.

The very first lilacs at NYBG were planted in the late 1800s as shrub borders along the Garden perimeter.
In 1912, horticulturist and renowned lilac hybridizer T.A. Havemeyer donated a group of lilacs from the collection of 20,000 he had amassed at Cedar Hill, his Long Island estate and nursery.

Our Steere Herbarium is home to millions of plant specimens that tell the story of our planet’s botanical biodiversity across centuries of time, which informs our efforts to save the plants of our world for future generations.

Peruse the herbarium specimens and stories that live here at NYBG.

View Lilac Specimens

Learn About Lilacs on The Hand Lens

Shifts in climate affect plants' natural cycles (phenology). For example, in April 2020, NYBG's lilacs began to bloom three weeks earlier than the previous year, probably due to warm weather.