When we bought this house there was a wonderful lilac hedge out front, and I love lilacs, for the flowers and fragrance and all, but these are the old variety, and the suckers are driving me crazy! They are coming up everywhere, in my flower beds, lawn, and pretty much everywhere I don't want them. Is there a way to get rid of these suckers? I keep trying to pull them and dig them, but they just come back of course. I hate to take out whole thing, as I really do like the lilacs, and it's well established and it would take years in our zones to get anything I would replace them with established. What can I do? I would love ideas and suggestions please!

Sandi, is there any way to make it so that the Lilacs can have a mow path around them? That's what I've had to do with some suckering shrubs here that I want to keep. Here, old fashioned Lilacs sucker, but not too aggressively like it sounds like they do in your area. I'm having that problem with an old flowering Quince. I had the bright idea to put a bed around it, and in a couple of years the whole bed was riddled with Quince babies attached to the mother plant. This spring I've been digging out all the flowers in the bed so I can just let it turn back into lawn space and mow the suckers as they show up. Seems the more modern hybrid Lilacs I'm growing aren't suckering as bad.

The modern hybrids don't sucker as much, some not at all.

Neals suggestion is great, and really the only thing you can do is remove the suckers. Suckers on lilacs are not a sign of stress, like on a lot of plants it's just their way of multiplying.

We have the hedge so we can mow around it, but the darn thing just keeps sending out those nasty runners. I'll post some pictures, so you can see, lol! I really like lilacs, just don't want them in certain places and getting tired of digging them out of beds.
In this one you can see 1/2 of the hedge, the other half is on the other side of the sidewalk, and you can also see the raised flower bed in the front yard.

Here you can see the hedge and the bed a little better, the distance between the 2 is probably about 6-7 feet, and I keep getting new lilacs coming up in the flower bed and under the trees in the rocks

You can see the front of the house here, and the pine tree, plum trees, etc. and I even get lilacs in the flower beds next to the house. Maybe I just need a bigger yard and more land!

Pretty yard, Sandi!

The lilacs are going to travel to the area with the best nutrients for them, so it makes sense it would go for your flower bed. They can easily come up 6-7 feet away. Best you can do is mow where you can, and cut them out of the beds.

And I almost hate to tell you this, but our place had a burned out house on it. Just a cellar left. We assume the owners had planted two lilacs around the 1900, one in front of the house, one in back. They now cover an area approx 40 X 60.

When we bought this house about 5 years ago, there was a large gap in the hedge where the deer and such had been going thru and DH thought we should do something to fill it in. I vetoed that idea, figuring that it would fill in, and now you can't even tell. They do grow well, at least here. I'm not into trimming them into a box type hedge, so I do let them get taller and uneven, but it fits in with my cottage/rustic type gardening. Thanks for saying the yard's pretty! I took those tonight, and you can tell we just aren't very far into spring yet I just came back from my niece's and Mom's houses today, and they only live about 30 miles away, but are about 1000 feet lower in elevation and a good 2-3 weeks ahead of us I want my yard and flowers to be green like theirs

I just noticed, you can see my Easter bunnies lining the sidewalk

We're just starting to green up here, too.

Those bunnies are cute!

Yep, now if we could just stop getting snowed on! You keep getting snow too so I'm sure that everyone there is tired of winter too! C'mon spring!