posted 10 years ago
Your plan sounds fine to me, though I'm no lilac expert. The only real care we give ours is some ash and lime, yearly.
I don't like being in charge of removing grass on an ongoing basis, so after mulching I'd be planting something grass suppressing around/under it, and then leaving it be. Preferably something you have a surplus of on hand that you know does well at this, that also prefers alkaline soil, like the lilac.
The huge old lilac in our garden gets very little (none maybe?) watering in the summer. Of course yours will need some for now, but hopefully will establish a good root system and be more self sufficient with time. I would guess ours has been there at least 40+ years, and it's fine; it came back nicely after 20 years of neglect after we pulled the blackberry canes out of it and gave it some ash/lime. No grass grows under it, just moss and some wildflowers.
I wouldn't think strawberries are the best fit since they like a more acidic soil, but then so do blackberries, and they seem fine growing around our lilac, so... maybe worth trying anyhow.
Good luck!
'Theoretically this level of creeping Orwellian dynamics should ramp up our awareness, but what happens instead is that each alert becomes less and less effective because we're incredibly stupid.' - Jerry Holkins