IrisSurprisesAndOthers

Joan Katherine Shaw

Iris 'Batik' at DragonGoose Farm in 2004

he unusual and award-winning 'Batik' iris shown above is of a type known as a border bearded iris. The border bearded are shorter than the tall bearded, have less ostentatious beards, but bloom around the same time. The 'Batik' was developed by the grower, Ensminger, in 1986. The purple and white flowers have a yellow beard and bloom on stalks of approximately 24 inches. I planted one rhizome of this iris in 1996 in a fairly crowded bed and forgot about it until it surprised me with a bloom in 2002. I haven't a clue where it was during the intervening six years, though it may have been hidden by roses and hollyhocks close by.

Such are the surprises of gardening.

History of an Iris Explosion

ordered 'Batik' because of its unusual coloring. We didn't need more iris. We were by that time overrun by iris, fed by a rampant accretion and our own acquisitive nature. We had found a number of granny irises when we moved onto the farm in 1969, and our daughter, Melanie, discovered a species iris, a spuria, growing behind the garden patch reserved for her when she was barely into her teens. She moved this sole specimen, at the time in deep shade and not blooming, to a sunny spot and nurtured it into a fair-sized row. Melanie tells me that it wasn't surprising that she'd found this species iris growing among the old lilacs and honeysuckle on the brow of our hill, since spuria irises were among the plants (granny bearded iris, Paeonia officinalis, Harrison's yellow roses, and the common lilac) brought across the plains by the settlers in the West, and our place here was settled by a family from Denmark, Neils Bergeson and his wife, Olive.

By the time we'd divided and transplanted the grannies and Melanie worked to increase the clump of spuria iris (which turned out to be the white Iris orientalis), Melanie was in high school and suggested we order a Schreiner's catalog. From this catalog we chose twenty different varieties of their irises to plant in a bed east of the house. In the early 1990s, we added a group of Yellow Flags (I. pseudacorus, also known as Yellow Water Iris or Swamp Iris). We planted these in a dampish spot along the top of the retaining wall at the turnaround which led up into the front yard.

In the meantime, Melanie was collecting some cultivars of her own, many of them the shorter border irises and early blooming miniature bulbaceous irises. Among the latter was a patch of the bulbaceous Iris reticulata 'Cantab,' that bloomed early this year just outside the study window in one of the squares of the brick herb garden. At the time, of course, I hadn't a clue what it was, only that it was a strikingly lovely little grouping. Eventually, I hauled Melanie over to take a look at it. (Mind you, I wasn't expecting miracles -- she'd planted this group at least twenty years before when she was still a girl.)

"Melanie," I said, "What kind of irises are these, do Iris reticulata 'Cantab'

you remember?" She said immediately, "That's Iris reticulata." She closed her eyes to confer with her inner encyclopedia, then opened them. "'Cantab' comes to mind."

I rushed inside the house before I could forget what she told me and pulled out a stack of flower catalogs, looked up the variety, and found that, sure enough, our little clump was indeed 'Cantab.'

And here they are (a trifle crowded) to the left.

The grannies, the Schreiner's, the Yellow Flags, and Melanie's miniatures and border irises of various types were the extent of our iris population for a few years. The Yellow Flags stayed put, mainly because of the lack of muddiness down there due to drought, but all the others showed their appreciation for minimal care, some of them with no care at all, by ballooning into alarming proportions. For instance, to this day there's an increasingly large circle of dwarfs in the former equipment yard that Melanie, overrun with the plants, had tossed there, hoping they'd die. They get no supplementary watering, they're sitting on top of the ground which is as hard as a rock, and they're as happy as clams.

Well actually, irises are supposed to be planted only slightly below the ground. This we read in instructions on the planting and care of irises, along with a lot of other advice, much of it meticulous. Our daughter and son-in-law, Ethy and Steven Cannon, can't seem to grow irises well in their fertile and well rained-upon Minneapolis garden, mainly because of the prevalance there of some sort of borer. Now Ethy tells me that her Dutch irises, doing well up until last year, disappeared over the winter. Yet we've found irises here to be amazingly resilient in the dry, alkali soil of Cache Valley, Utah, with no babying at all.

Over the years I've divided and replanted ours many times over, dug up and gave them away, and, as a last resort, dumped them into the compost heap -- where they continued to grow as though given a new lease on life. In short, we have them everywhere. Indeed, they are, along with lilacs and red twig dogwood, among the most hardy of plants on the farm. And it seems that nothing can discourage them.

The Plant Eaters

White Spuria Iris (Iris orientalis; also known as Butterfly Iris) in the North Copse

he names of the Schreiner's varieties have been lost in the mists of time, alas, and by now have been replaced in the catalogs by newer varieties. This doesn't change their beauty when in full bloom, of course, and I planted many of the strikingly deep purple irises, the same number of a dark maroon variety, and, in front of these, a border of the shorter pinkish coral and light magenta (shown below left)-- all in a stand-alone bed of approximately fifty feet in length that I christened the "Iris Walk." And why not? I had enough irises to furnish most of the walks in Lewiston!

Magenta Iris

On the other side of this walk is a longer bed that borders the iris walk and curves along the brow of our hill. In this bed are the granny irises with their long stalks and smaller, but very fragrant blossoms. They share the bed with some of the left over irises that I replanted from other overgrown beds.

I'm now faced with the chore of digging and dividing them all again. In fact, they're years overdue for this, since already they've eaten many scores of lilies that I foolishly planted near them. The very tall spuria iris that Melanie planted twenty-five years ago in a thin row in the brick herb garden not only filled the ten-foot-long bed in a matter of ten years but have eaten their share of plants, too, including a delicate Rocky Mountain iris of Melanie's that was no match for the spuria's devouring rhizomes.

I'd like to mention here that irises, when unable to spread outward, spread downward. During my first (long overdue) digging and division of the Schreiner irises, I was astonished to discover no less than four layers of viable rhizomes, all of which took on flourishing life after replanting in the iris walk. When Melanie and Jodie (of Zeyer's Horticultural Service) dug out the spuria irises in the brick herb garden, they too discovered many layers of rhizomes and, in fact, felt that they'd never come to the end of them. These rhizomes, planted in outlying areas among deep-rooted trees and drought-tolerant plants and without regular watering, continue their prolific life with discouraging enthusiasm.

We despair of our irises, of course, but only as we would perhaps despair of recalcitrant children. We at times look around and feel overwhelmed by them, especially at deadheading time. But we nevertheless love them, especially when they're in bloom, but also after their blooms are long gone (and cut down!) while their fans of blue-green blades live on, undeterred by the hot weather, continuing as a reliable backdrop to the summer's and early fall's flowers.

Newer Varieties

Intrigued by talk of the repeat-blooming varieties of irises and intrepid in the teeth of seemingly acres of the things, Melanie and I picked out a number of repeaters from Park's 2002 catalog-- My choices were 'Immortality','Victoria Falls', and 'Breakers'. Of these three varieties, I planted two each inside the oval drive in front of the house (The magnificent 'Breakers' is shown below).

Iris 'Breakers'

Melanie planted hers on the south side of her own place, The Granary, which is located a few hundred feet southwest from the main house. All of these irises are spectacular, with ruffled, truly gorgeous blooms. And although they have not yet repeated in the fall, they do send up an unusual number of stalks and continue blooming long after the other irises surrounding them have finished. Melanie tells me that her own irises have occasionally rebloomed, perhaps because of th Spuria Iris Royal Belize

eir protected spot against the granary's south wall. She's added some antique irises to that spot, including the lovely Iris pallida, a pale lilac with a citrus scent. She's also added an older (and smaller) variety of spuria iris, 'Royal Belise', a purple, shown at right.

The Iris Surprise

his spring I discovered a Siberian iris (shown at below left) behind and to the east of the daylily 'Joan Senior' that Melanie had given me for Mother's Day a few years ago. This was indeed a surprise because, noticing the emerging narrow spears, I thought we were faced with a new invasion of the white spuria iris. Luckily, I couldn't get around to digging it up because, not long after, it bloomed beautifully in its well cared-for spot among the groundcover, Cotoneaster horizontalis.

We were at a loss as to where the iris came from or what type of cultivar it might be, since there were no Siberian irises even remotely nearby and Melanie's Rocky Mountain Iris -- sixty or seventy feet away and around the corner of the house -- was not only white, but had long since been engulfed by the spurias. We finally decided a bird must have dropped it there as a gift -- it's situated right under a dwarf red-leaf plum tree (Prunus cistena), and simply counted the plant among our blessings. Siberian Iris

The blooms of this seedling iris lasted for a long time and, now deadheaded, its spears make a nice background for the 'Joan Senior' daylily which will soon be in bloom itself.

There are many plants and shrubs and trees I would love to see in our garden, those I'd grown up with in New Jersey, such as blue hydrangeas and rhododendrons and azaleas and dogwood trees. But we do seem fortunate here in those plants suitable for our soil, heat, and dryness. Lilacs, for instance. And iris!

Best wishes,

Joan Katherine Shaw

June 2004

Photos - Joan Katherine Shaw
Research - Melanie Shaw

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