Gardening Topic for June 2005
The Iris in All Her Glory

Provided by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org.

The Iris is named for the ancient Greek Goddess Iris who used the rainbow as her own personal bridge on her many missions for Hera. In Spanish, the name for a rainbow is arco iris, or arc of iris. Hence, things associated with a variety of colors, like the colored part of our eye or the supreme wealth of colors found in this flower bear her name. While the beardless Irises such as the communal Siberian or the Iris Romano or the tiny, early, Iris Cristata deserve an article, I will keep this one focused on the bearded Iris, my personal favorite. Without naming them technically I'll just say that there are very short, medium short and tall beardeds to choose from and in planting these different heights we can have Irises blooming for a longer period. The shorter they are, the earlier they bloom and the taller they are, the later they bloom.

The Iris' huge petals form a shimmering chalice on top with and a ruffly, gossamer skirt below and we haven't even gotten to the beard yet! The beard, for which they are named, is a fuzzy caterpillar crawling from the center to the top of the skirt. One of the amazing moments in natural artistry is here, especially when this beard takes on a completely different color from the petals! Imagine rose, violet and maroon with gold in the center interacting on a petal as a mentor for Monet and out pops a bright orange beard! There is no way to address the Iris unless you rant and rave about colors and it is in the Iris that we can find a rainbow's breadth of colors, nuanced and layered in the finest tradition of the renaissance painters. In fact, the studious painter would do well to study none but the Iris for color design and technique. Bearded Irises are gold, blue silver, dark purple, darker purple, darker purple still, they are lavender, white, mustard yellow, pale yellow, cranberry, peach, and these are just a few of the solid colors in my own garden! Now imagine combinations of all of the above on the same stalk! How about luminescent lavender on top with a rich blue-purple skirt? Or a deep velvety purple with a sky blue beard! And we haven't touched on scent yet.

A wonder of the Iris is that its scent can be heavenly and it is impossible for the perfume manufacturer to re-create. A fun trick of my mind is to see an Iris and then think it smells the way it looks. I am often reminded of the scent of childhood's purple popsicles on a sweltering summer day when I smell a purple Iris. There is a rich nuance and layering of scents in the Iris much like the color play in the petals. I can smell hints of lemon and licorice in some and always there is that wholly unique and barely describable sweetness that is perfect. Some Irises have been bred for just their visual display with their sweet scent lost, but I don't think I could bring myself to live among those.

We still have more Iris virtues to consider. The Iris can grow strong and beautiful in what gardeners consider poor soil. We all know some high maintenance beauties of the garden, which, if not needy for pruning like the tea rose, are at least fussy for soil replenishment or watering. I marvel at the achievements of the Iris while it makes such minimal demands on us. For the lazy gardener, which is the heightened state of the true gardener, the Iris is an action packed wonder. Such performance and so independent! Like a cat, they can take or leave our attentions, and in fact, the less attention the better. Irises prefer dry, crummy soil and general neglect. They thrive in locations where many other garden favorites flail.

Last but not least let us praise their longevity. As a case in point, and an explanation for my writing this article, my name is Iris. I am named after my grandmother. She died in 1963. Her Irises are thriving in my gardens. I recently divided them and now I'm starting five new colonies of her cranberry/maroon colored Iris.

Here are some thoughts on how to plant them. A common mistake of the new Iris gardener is to plant them like other plants. With most plants we bury their root parts well beneath the soil so as not to leave anything exposed on the surface where it will dry out and die. But in fact, the Bearded Irises require that their fleshy brown part (rhizome) which grows sideways be exposed to the sun. The only part of the Bearded Iris buried beneath the surface are the roots which grow beneath this rhizome. This leads to a very shallow planting. Planting anything in this manner takes some getting used to.

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Provided by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org