As a qualified gardener I have been involved in horticulture for twenty-two years musty as a council gardener.So professionally I have had no involvement with bulbs. A colleague with a good and varied interest in plants once asked "what ever possessed you to get interested in bulbs". The answer I think was the Silverhill's seed catalogue. With 130m2 of cliff-side, concrete and shingle or bark mulch, most of my bulbs are at my parents 650m2 section.Being half-way up a gully on Scinde Island/Napier Hill I am a bit warmer then it is at my parents,I got down to 2C last winter whereas my parents and work had a frost of -5C.The summer high which we had last week was 34C.So if I have got this right Napier is USDA Zone 9. The back garden gets used as a nursery for bedding plants, vegetables(for mum mostly)and assorted bulbs, perennials and shrubs (which I have commandeered mum's garden for).It also contains a few carnivorous plants, a collection of Pelargoniums and a few odd vegetables and herbs.At mum's I have Lachenalia, Gladiolus, Oxalis, Babiana and others like Ferraria.Mum also has got her collection of lilies and with a interest in English wild flowers bluebells and snowdrops. This brings me to my query. I sowed Lilium columbianium and L.bulbiferum var.croceum late last spring and unlike L. pyrenaicium not a single one is up.Should I be worried or do they take over six weeks to germinate, should I had stratified them, or are they hypogael? Malcolm Redwood.