Trilliums Full Growing Guide (Plant, Grow, and Care)

Looking for a perennial for your woodland garden? Consider planting shade-loving trillium flowers.

This post will tell you all about trillium basics, how to plant trilliums, and how to maintain them in your garden. Use the advanced jump to jump straight to any section, or explore the full post.

Jump to:

• What Are Trilliums?
• Trillium Basics
• Where Do Trilliums Grow?
• Why Grow Trilliums?
• Trillium Landscaping Ideas
• Recommended Trillium Varieties
• When Do Trilliums Bloom?
• How Long Do Trilliums Bloom?
• When to Plant Trilliums
• Ideal Growing Conditions for Trilliums
• How to Plant Trilliums
• How to Care for Trilliums
• How to Divide and Transplant Trilliums
• Recommended Planting Combinations for Trillium
• Frequently Asked Questions About Growing Trilliums
• Where to Buy Trilliums

What Are Trilliums?

Trilliums are charming woodland flowers that also are called “wakerobins,” “tri flowers,” “wood lilies,” “toadshades” and “birthroots.” But usually, we just call them “trilliums” after the name of their genus.

There are around 50 species of plants within Trillium. The name refers to the triple petals and sepals of each flower.

Trilliums require our respect and stewardship, as their numbers are far from plentiful, and they are easily vulnerable to damage. As explained here, “32 percent of our native trillium species or varieties are threatened with extinction, thanks to human development, predation by white-tailed deer and feral hogs, competition from invasive plants and more.”

The article explains that many people are deeply fond of trillium flowers, which has brought special attention to their plight. But that means that trilliums have also helped the public become more aware of the plights of other endangered plants, making trilliums a sort of “poster plant.”

For that reason, you should always purchase your trillium plants from a nursery, rather than heading out into the woods where you live to transplant them from the ground.

In fact, you should not even pick a trillium flower, as doing so may kill the entire plant. The Michigan Natural Features Inventory states, “It is also worth noting that all species of Trillium are protected by state law and that picking flowers or leaves often results in the death of the whole plant, even if the perennial rhizome is left behind.”

Note that there seems to be some contention on this point. Some sources say that picking trilliums can kill the plant, while others say that it will damage the plant but not kill it.

We think it is best to err on the side of caution. It is not necessary to pick trillium plants. So, it is best to leave them alone.

Trillium Basics

Zones:	4-9
Blooming season:	Late winter through spring
Expected height:	Up to 18 inches
Soil:	Moist but well-drained soil
Sun:	Full shade to partial shade

Where Do Trilliums Grow?

Trillium plants are native to North America and Asia, and are most readily associated with the US, where they can be found in wooded areas. If you happen to reside in the southern Appalachians, you may be particularly well-acquainted with them.

Why Grow Trilliums?

• Trillium plants are endangered. By cultivating and propagating them in your garden, you are adding to the trillium population.
• Add winter interest to your garden with trilliums. You can look forward to them blooming well before most of the rest of your garden perennials.
• Trilliums are charming, distinctive plants that for many people have a special regional appeal.
• If you are having a hard time finding plants for a shade garden, you will love how happy trilliums are beneath your trees.
• Trilliums are low-maintenance plants that do not require a lot of effort with respect to pruning, staking or other care.
• It is not common for trilliums to suffer too much from diseases or pests.

Trillium Landscaping Ideas

Here is how to use trillium to liven up your landscape:

• Woodland garden: You can fill out barren patches in a woodland garden very effectively using trillium. In fact, this is a great way to conceal all the unsightly brown dirt with some life and color.
• Borders and walkways: Trilliums can line a walkway or border beautifully.
• Formal gardens: Even though we associate trilliums with the wildness of the woods, they actually look great in formal garden.

Note that trillium plants are pretty delicate; for that reason, you should ensure that you do not plant them somewhere they are likely to get trampled upon.

Recommended Trillium Varieties

Here are some popular trillium varieties that can beautify your garden beds:

• Trillium flexipes: Also known as “nodding wakerobin,” this is a type of white trillium with elegant flowers featuring pointed petals. The sepals are slender and green.
• Trillium grandiflorum: This might just be the best-known type of trillium, producing white flowers. The white petals have a more rounded shape than the pointy ones on nodding wakerobin, giving it a very different appearance.
• Trillium erectum: The showy flowers of this type of trillium have a dark red color with the petals shaped like diamonds.
• Trillium chloropetalum: Also known as the “giant wake robin,” this trillium produces mottled foliage. The flowers may be purplish-blackish, yellow, red or white.
• Trillium cuneatum: Referred to as “Little Sweet Betsy,” this variety includes mottled leaves and blooms in maroon, green, brown or yellow.
• Trillium grandiflorum f. roseum: This particular type of grandiflorum trillium produces blooms with light pink petals.
• Trillium sessile: Called “toadshade,” this plant has large, marbled leaves and deep reddish-brownish blooms. Choose it if you are in search of an early bloomer.
• Trillium luteum: The “wood lily” is a late-spring bloomer that produces yellow blossoms with a lemony aroma and mottled leaves. It is common in the southeast part of the US.
• Trillium recurvatum: Purplish-reddish blooms and mottled leaves make this a lovely addition to your garden. It blooms early.
• Trillium undulatum: With its white flowers graced with reddish-pinkish markings, this variety is referred to as the “painted trillium.”

When Do Trilliums Bloom?

Trilliums may start blooming as early as midwinter or as late as the tail end of spring.

The exact bloom time you can expect for your trilliums depends on where you live and what conditions are present. The specific variety of trillium you plant may also impact the bloom period.

How Long Do Trilliums Bloom?

The duration the blooms on trilliums last is typically several weeks.

When to Plant Trilliums

The most common season recommended for planting trilliums is late summer. But you can also plant them in early fall or early spring.

Ideal Growing Conditions for Trilliums

Let’s go over the conditions in which trilliums are happiest in terms of water, sun and soil.

How Much Sun Do Trilliums Need?

Because trilliums are native to woodland settings, they prefer partial dappled shade. They can also grow in full shade, which may actually be better in a southern region.

What Type of Soil is Right for Trilliums?

Moist, well-drained soil is key for trilliums. If you have clay soil, you should first amend it with compost and peat moss so that it can drain. This will also increase the richness of the soil, which is important for these plants as well.

How Much Water Do Trilliums Need?

You need to provide enough water that the soil your trilliums are planted in is consistently moist, but not wet.

That means that they may need extra water if it is really hot and dry in your location, but otherwise, you should find you do not need to do much manual watering at all.

How to Plant Trilliums

When you plant trilliums, you will likely use nursery plants. But you can also grow them from seed. Below are instructions for planting nursery plants in your containers or flower beds, along with directions for how to start trilliums from seed.

Container Planting

You may be wondering whether it is possible to plant trilliums in your container garden. If you conduct some research into this, you will quickly find out that it is not a common practice.

Toronto Master Gardeners offers some thoughts on this topic in response to a question posed by a visitor. But the post specifically addresses the issue of indoor container growing, saying, “There doesn’t appear to have been much research conducted into the possibility of growing Trilliums – or indeed any other woodland plants / spring ephemerals – indoors in containers. It is always fun to experiment, but because Trilliums require such specific growing conditions, it is doubtful that your experiment will be successful.”

The main issue seems to involve winter dormancy, which is necessary for the plant. To deal with this, the writer suggests, “You may have more success in overwintering them if you place the pot into your garden soil in a moist and shady spot through the fall and winter so that the required period of dormancy in cold temperatures can take place.”

This does suggest that trilliums might do okay in an outdoor container garden.

You can find some additional input on container planting for trilliums on this thread. One user wrote, “I bought one last year, a dark red one and I put it in a large pot with a mix of leafmould and compost and it's about 8" tall now, or something is, I'm assuming it's my trillium. It's been sat under the viburnum in quite heavy shade. I will probably put it into the ground soon having read that they don't like pots, I don't want to push my luck.”

Another user on the same thread reported that they had to keep some trilliums in pots during winter. After transplanting them in their flower beds in the spring, they grew successfully.

They point out that trilliums need “lots of humus, and damp leaf mould” out in the woods. So, it is understandable why a container might not be ideal.

If you want to try growing trilliums in pots, by all means, go for it—but be aware that they may not make it over the long term.

• Choose containers that have drainage holes.
• Make sure you are putting rich soil in the pots.
• Be sure you do not let the soil dry out (which can happen easily in pots).
• Consider adding some mulch to the top of the pot so that the soil conditions will be a bit more like what the plant could expect in the woods. But do not forget to leave a little space around the stem so that it does not rot.

Ground Planting

1. Pick a spot in your garden that is suitable for the trilliums, and amend the soil if necessary. You may want to mix in some compost and peat moss, especially if you are dealing with clay soil.
2. Dig holes 2-4 inches deep for your plants, and space the trilliums around 6-12 inches apart.
3. Once you have planted the trilliums, backfill the soil and water well.

Keep watering the trilliums extra while they establish.

When they first start growing, you might wonder why they needed so much space. But they will form clumps over the coming years.

Starting Trilliums from Seed

Once you have trillium plants growing in your garden, you can collect the seeds and use them to propagate new trilliums.

One nice thing about starting trilliums from seeds is that it is a good deal easier and more straightforward then starting a lot of other perennials from seeds.

You do not have to go through a complicated process of starting the seeds indoors. Instead, you can just plant them directly outside. In fact, you will want to do this right after you have harvested them.

1. Begin by collecting the seeds right around the time you see the berries splitting. This should be about 10-14 weeks after your plants are done flowering. You can get up to 60 seeds from just one seed pod.
2. Plant the seeds in your garden bed. You will notice that each seed has a substance around that is known as “elaiosome.” You should not attempt to remove this substance from the seeds. Just plant them as they are.

Each seed should be about 1 inch down. Make sure they are covered.

3. Gently water the flower bed, making sure you do not wash out the seeds.
4. Now, you just need to keep an eye on the flower bed, watering the soil when necessary so it does not dry out.

You definitely are going to want to post a sign to remind yourself that this is where your trillium seeds are located. They will not germinate the spring after you sow them, but the one after that. So, it is easy to forget they are there.

5. When the trillium seedlings do at last germinate, you can fertilize them. Choose a type of fertilizer that does not have too much nitrogen in it. 5-10-10 is a good ratio.

What happens if you use too much nitrogen? The trillium plants will grow quickly, but they may not flower as profusely.

Starting Trilliums from Cuttings

Technically, you can start trilliums from cuttings if they are from the rhizomes. But you cannot start them from cuttings you take from the stems or leaves.

To give you a little extra info on taking rhizome cuttings, a process also known as “rhizome wounding,” here is what Master Gardener Chrys Gardener has to say:

“This is the fastest and most reliable way to propagate trilliums, and involves cutting a shallow V-shaped groove in the upper length of a trillium rhizome (a thick root-like structure several inches below the soil). If the soil is gently removed from the top of the rhizome, this groove can be cut without disturbing the rest of the plant. Dust the groove with a fungicide, and cover with the removed soil. A full year later, uncover the rhizome again and you should see bulblets that have formed along the wound. Carefully remove the bulblets, replant and water thoroughly, and you should have blooming-size plants in one to two years.”

How to Care for Trilliums

Let’s talk about what you need to know about trillium care including mulching, fertilizing and more. You will discover these shade garden plants can flourish without a lot of attention from you.

How to Fertilize Trilliums

As we mentioned previously, it can be a good idea to fertilize your trillium seedlings. After that, however, you may not need to fertilize them again, assuming you have planted them in the rich soil where they flourish best. If they do seem to require additional nutrition, you can fertilize them around the time when they flower.

How to Mulch Trilliums

Fall is the perfect time to mulch around your trilliums. They do well with around 1-2 inches.

Mulch has a couple of benefits for this plant. For one thing, it helps keep the soil moist and rich. For another, it may prevent weeds and other plants from crowding in on trilliums. If you want to help your trilliums spread, mulch may be a valuable tool for assisting them in clumping and multiplying effectively.

How to Stake Trilliums

You do not need to worry about staking trillium plants. They stand up fine on their own!

How to Prune Trilliums

There is no reason to deadhead trilliums. Indeed, while some people do seem to do it, it seems wiser to avoid it, given the fragility of the plant.

When to Cut Back Trilliums

Once the leaves are beginning to die at the tail end of the season, you can trim your trilliums if you wish to neaten up the appearance of your shade garden. But you do not really have to do this. In the woods where trilliums are happiest, this doesn’t happen.

How to Divide and Transplant Trilliums

If possible, you should try to avoid dividing and transplanting trilliums. It can be hard for them to recover from being relocated. But if you need to do it, here are the steps.

1. During late summer, use a shovel to dig around your trillium plant. Make sure that you are far enough from the rhizomes and roots that you will not damage them.
2. Pressing the shovel underneath the roots, push upward to get the trillium out of the ground.
3. Carefully wipe off the excess dirt so you can get a better look at what you are doing. Then, split the plant’s rhizomes apart.
4. Make new holes and plant the rhizomes individually.
5. Backfill the soil and water the newly-divided trilliums well.

Water the trilliums extra while they are establishing. Keep a close watch on them to make sure they are doing okay.

Note that if you are trying to divide and transplant trilliums in your garden beds, it may not be too tricky.

But if part of your garden is actual forest, it might be more of a challenge to dig up the trilliums from that area. You may not be able to extract the rhizomes from among the roots of other plants they are growing among.

If you think you will harm the rhizomes trying to free the plant, it is probably better just to fill the soil back in and leave it alone.

Are Trilliums Vulnerable to Diseases or Pests?

You probably will not have a lot of serious issues with pests or diseases with trilliums. They can sometimes get leaf spot, root rot, and other common plant diseases, however.

Sometimes, you might see a trillium that has green streaks on its petals. The streaks can have an orderly appearance, suggesting that they somehow belong there. This might cause you to think that you are looking at a natural variety of the plant.

But in truth, you are looking at a diseased trillium. To be specific, it is suffering from an infection of phytoplasmas, a type of bacteria.

These bacteria can have other unusual effects as well. For example, they could cause a trillium plant to produce more leaves than it normally would.

In the past, this caused quite some confusion among researchers, who believed they were looking at legit varieties. Indeed, they even went so far as to give them formal names.

Those names have since been revoked, of course. Hooper, Case, and Meyers learned the truth in 1971 through the use of electron microscopy.

To this day, it is still unclear how trilliums come to be infected with this bacteria. One theory is that leaf hoppers may be involved, but this has never been proven.

Speaking of leafhoppers, what pests can plague trilliums? On the whole, insects usually are not a problem. Sometimes, slugs and snails may chew on trilliums.

Deer might eat trilliums, especially Trillium grandiflorum. But they can be described as being rabbit-resistant plants.

Beneficial Insects for Trilliums: Flies and Ants

Sometimes, you might notice flies visiting your trillium plants. They are not pests, however. In fact, they can be beneficial to trilliums.

As this blog explains, “There is not a lot of documentation about the likely pollinators for Painted Trillium, but on more than one occasion, I have seen flies visiting the flowers. The showy display works! But the flies’ motivation is not to help with pollination. They have their own needs to meet, mainly finding food. They may visit the anthers to eat some nutritious pollen,”

The post then proceeds to explain that however unintentionally, these flies may help to spread around pollen so that trilliums can reproduce. So, they may not be as attractive as hummingbirds, butterflies or bees, but you should generally leave them alone.

What gets even more fascinating is that there are types of trilliums that produce flowers with colors and odors that specifically appeal to flies. If you have dark red trilliums in your yard that smell a bit “off,” they may draw flies, which associate their appearance and scent with rotting meat.

The blog explains that some types of flies use carrion to lay eggs since the larvae will have something to feed on when they hatch. They will not lay eggs on the trilliums since they will realize they are not rotting meat, but they will pollinate them in the process of making that discovery.

Another not pest you should leave alone when you see it by your trilliums is ants. These insects like the elaiosome coating the seeds. The post says, “They take the seeds back to their homes, eat the elaiosome, and toss the seed on their compost heap, effectively planting the seed in a fertile, protected location. This evolutionary strategy, known as myrmecochory, is shared by many spring blooming wildflowers.”

Recommended Planting Combinations for Trillium

Here are some plants that will flourish alongside trilliums:

• Ferns: Add some contrasting foliage to your woodland garden by interspersing trilliums and ferns.
• Phlox: Some types of phlox can flourish in partial shade, and may be happy in the same conditions as your trillium plants. See our Phlox Full Growing Guide.
• Hellebores: Looking for other winter and early spring-blooming plants to go with your trilliums? Hellebores can blossom at the same time, and enjoy partial and full shade conditions. This makes them one of the best choices for trillium companions. See our Hellebores Full Growing Guide.
• Anemone: In particular, consider planting wood anemone along with your trilliums.

Frequently Asked Questions About Growing Trilliums

Below are answers to some questions we see people asking online about trilliums.

Where to Buy Trilliums

If you are ready to cultivate these rare perennials in your garden, you should shop for trilliums online. You will find a much larger selection on the web than you would at your local nursery.