Welcome Tane!

Must be interesting gardening with PNW natives in Wales! lol... I must admit i would be hard pressed not to do the same if I had to leave here...

If the Cornus and the Trillium are doing well, I suspect it is on the shady side for the Lillium columbianum, but you never know. I assume this is a deciduous magnolia? If not, then definitely too shady for the lily. Maybe on the edge of the shade it would do well though, if you have a good spot for it there. Just make sure the drainage is good and give it a try. They also seem to do fairly well in pots, so if you have a holding area, you could try it in a nice big pot (say a bright blue one to contrast with the orange flowers? lol...) and then bring it out when in flower, and tuck it back into the holding area when not.

Sounds nice :D

I would be awfully tempted to keep the magnolia carefully thinned so it doesn't get too dense. I have done some consulting with a couple in Seattle that had one of these in their garden, and almost nothing grew under it because of the deep shade. Even evergreens struggled, until they opened up the canopy a bit and let some light through. Once they did that, things did much better. As a bonus, they said the layered effect they achieved with the branches of the magnolia itself made the flowers stand out more, so they were happy for that as well.

At any rate, good luck with it all! Hmm, are you willing to have plants shipped to you from overseas? There is a company in British COlumbia i have worked with in the past that I know does phyto certs for shipping to the US. Pacific Rim Native Plants is in BC's interior, so a little cooler than we are here, but they grow a wodnerfully ecclectic assortment of West Coast natives. They are also wonderful to work with, worth checking out- Pacific Rim Natives.

Good luck with it all!

the west coast lilies in particular have a habit of sending up multiple stems from a single large bulb, so you may have one large bulb, or one that has split. The little bulblits the lilies produce in the ground tend to stay attached until they get to fairly large sizes, even though when disturbed at all they fall off at the slightest provocation, even just simply their own weight. Honestly in my own garden they do better in pots than they do in the ground (I think they get eaten half the time) so my biggest and nicest clump is one that was salvaged bulbs that were left in a large nursery pot. They go up and down... didn't bloom this year, I think the large one bloomed itself out last year, and they are in regeneration mode again now. I hope, lol. I would rather not dig around in there and disturb them, if I don't have to.

Mine are in a large (24 inch across) nursery pot, nothing special. Just what I potted them into after salvaging a few, several years ago. They were potted with cobble in the bottom of the pot for good drainage and some support for the bulbs to rest on, and a course mix of fine lava rock, leaf mould and old potting soil. Did pretty well with that for several years, but I think the organic matter is pretty much spent now.

The pot is NOT sunk into the ground, but the loose bark mulch under it does tend to get heaved up around the bottom of the pot by moles every once in a while. It is possible that moles are eating the bulbs (Townsend's Moles are reputed to eat Tulips at least, and lilies are likely more edible than a tulip), but it is more likely that some kind of rat in the burrows taking advantage of the easy clandestine highway, or even the ever popular grey squirrels are digging them up and eating them. As i said, the ones in pots seem to do better, so I assume that it is underground rodents rather than curioius squirrels, who have no problem digging other things out of my pots.

Slugs will also eat the new stems as they come up. Drives me nuts, as you will come out and find the stems eaten half way through, and the poor little top listing to the side. If you have the slug bait that uses Iron Phosphate as the active ingredient, this takes care of them nicely. Just remember to bait around the outside of where you want to protect, not over the top of the plant itself. No sense in drawing the buggers to the plant you are trying to protect, lol. I have no personal experience with most of hte critters you mention, alas... I live on a very suburban island where that kind of stuff has all long since disappeared. Deer from what I understand will nip the flower buds off (preferring to do so just before they open, of course). Rabbits and groundhogs might also go for them at different stages *shrug*. Dunno what a weasel would want with a lily bulb, though, lol... unless it is to set a trap for a rabbit or a rat? *snicker*