Of all flower colors that paint the garden picture, none are so clear and singing—so full, rich, sparkling—as those of the iris.
This is especially true of the newcomers in the tall bearded group. However, their color range does not yet span the rainbow, and this is good.
There are fewer head-on color collisions in the garden where fire engine red and California poppy orange are absent.
True blues (as of some delphiniums) with no hint of lavender are missing, too, though the hybridizers are inching toward them.
The color catalogs have gotten there first, with true blue printer’s ink being easier to manipulate than color—carrying genes on the iris chromosome.
Even without a spectrum of red, blue, and orange (except bits in beards), there is plenty of color on the iris palette. There is also the generous willingness of the iris to produce color in abundant bold masses.
This massing is often more important than the color quality itself in composing the garden picture.
Breathtaking Iris Garden
A garden full of iris color is an exciting, heady experience. But, at the end of 4 or 5 weeks, it leaves its owner depleted emotionally and physically exhausted.
An iris patch the size of your living room at its peak of bloom can yield a wheelbarrow full of spent flowers each morning.
When they have finished blooming, you have only a variety of labels to admire until the following season.
Unless you are a glutton for color (if you love all azaleas and the flower-covered floats in the chamber of commerce parades!), you will find irises in mixed plantings more aesthetically satisfying than they are in the bold color masses of the iris bed.
And in a mixed planting, the garden may be beautiful for the whole growing season even though it is predominantly an iris garden.
Companion Plantings For Variation
Where irises are numerous in the garden, other plantings must be chosen primarily to vary in the following:
- Foliage
- Color
- Shape
- Texture
- Plant form
- Height
Some valuable plants to use are:
- Baptisia
- Foxglove
- Thermopsis caroliniana (like a tall yellow lupine with yellow-green foliage)
- Silver King artemisia (like a grey cloud)
- Thalictrum glaucum (which should be staked early)
- Wonderful herb, Florence fennel (like green smoke, turns chartreuse at the top when it blooms with the mid-season daylilies)
Taller than iris, these plants should be more or less behind them.
Growing among them in mid-border might be the following:
- Columbines
- Blue flax
- Canterbury
- Peach bells
- Blue veronicas
- Peonies
Sometimes, the latter are contenders for priority, but this is easily controlled by judicious picking for the house.
Ordinarily, their color is put on in separate spots and gets less attention than the massed iris bloom.
Where warm, rich iris colors are used, the harsh cold peony reds should be avoided and the whites, as they would be too contrasting.
The same is true of white irises planted among the full band deep-toned ones.
No idea is more dangerous than the generally accepted notion that any clashing colors can be automatically harmonized by sticking in lots of white.
Very tall, large irises and big peony clumps are out of scale in a small garden.
Lower-growing irises sometimes called border or intermediate irises, are fine for such use.
No irises are better garden subjects or more charming than:
- Amigo
- Pink Ruffles
- Blue Billet Doux
They are also good as cut flowers if they can be spared.
Bearded Iris Foliage
Bearded iris foliage, beautiful when healthy and unmarred, can be horrid. Sometimes, it is necessary to cut back foliage in midsummer or even reset to check rot.
For this reason, the iris should be set a few feet back from the edge of the border so that front foliage may partly conceal any gap that results from cutting or resetting.
In no case should other foliage be allowed to cover or crowd irises, as this induces rot.
In unfavorable seasons—heat and wetness following bloom—irises are lots of work and exasperating, but the damage is always less titan, it seems, and they are worth the trouble.
Delicate Details Of Iris Flowers
Examine the flowers closely, and you will discover delicacy and fine detail unmatched by any miniature on ivory.
Th veinings, stipplings, stitchings, lacings of contrasting color, or flushings of color laid on top of another color in a watercolor wash.
“Artistically blended,” say the catalogs when subtle color becomes indescribable. Notice the minute icy scales—thousands to a petal—which give a crisp sparkling sheen to the flowers.
Seeking irises for garden decoration, the gardener will note that subtly blended colors or the elaborately patterned plicates often look drab or muddy in mass and at a distance.
Also, fascinating details, such as Lady Mohr’s magenta beard, count for nothing in the garden picture.
He will recognize that such irises as Miss California, Inspiration, China Maid, Mulberry Rose, old Happy Days, and Shining Waters, though coarse and poorly formed, perhaps, compared to the elegant newer ones, are nevertheless excellent garden irises.
“The ten best,” the gardener says when speaking of varieties. “I don’t want many, just the ten best.”
The answer is that there are no ten best for everybody, everywhere. Irises are regional performers. Gardens have individual needs, and gardeners have their own likes and dislikes.
Visiting neighboring gardens and nurseries or the nearest iris enthusiast at bloom time will help you make your own list, with notes on blooming dates.
Making your list at a flower show is only second best, as the clumping effect cannot be judged.
Ordering bargain collections from the catalogs may prove educational, but it is bad for garden planning.
Japanese Irises
The Japanese irises follow the tall bearded in bloom time, which is good because they are too much the prima donnas, loving the spotlight.
They run the whole gamut of violets from the lightest tints (white, too) to the darkest shades on the blue and red sides, just missing true red and true blue.
In doubles and singles, there are all possible combinations and patterns of these colors, with veinings, blotchings, edgings, and flushings.
Only an ingrate would ask for a wider color range. However, they grow as large as breakfast plates in bogs (where it doesn’t freeze).
The garden, where they need plenty of water from early growth through blooming time, scales down nicely to saucer-size.
They are most effective and beautiful alone at the water’s edge and at their greatest disadvantage in a garden with fulvous daylilies which have no regard for the elegance and dignity of Japanese irises.
In the deep South Japanese iris, daylilies, and the striking Dutch amaryllis are sometimes seen growing together.
When taken from their pots and placed in the garden, they become individual dull’s eyes.
Nothing has ever overwhelmed RED amaryllis!
Siberian Irises
The Siberian iris share bloom time with the tall bearded, and so miss the attention they deserve. Some of their colors are fine, especially the rich, velvety tones.
Others seem thin, dull, or just namby-pamby—Iike weak, heated-over coffee. But, on the other hand, some of the new hybrids are especially good.
While you wait for prices to come down, grow the following:
- Caesar’s Brother
- Tycoon
- Perry’s Blue
- Snowy Egret
You’ll never part with Caesar’s Brother. Siberian foliage is always good dark green, rush-like, dense, upstanding, and durable.
This is a plant material that a modern landscape architect would approve of. “Clean lines,” he might say, “and a minimum of owner maintenance.”
Two other gardeners’ iris should be mentioned: one because of its potential and growing importance.
The other is so easy to grow and inexpensive that it is the best introduction to iris for the timid new gardener. They are the Louisiana iris and the bulbous Dutch iris..
Louisiana Iris
Though originating in bogs in the bayou country, the former doesn’t insist on hogs: like Southern girls, they are perfectly at home in New York and farther north, too.
With a color range almost as wide as the tall bearded, they have grace and distinction in form and will thrive in hot, moist areas where the tall bearded fail.
Dutch Iris
The Dutch iris blooms with tulips and plays an excellent second fiddle to them in the early spring garden, giving nice variety in flower form when tulips are numerous.
Easily planted in groups between late growing perennials, such as Baptista, phlox, and peonies. It is out of the way before they begin to crowd.
When one color is repeated in all parts of the garden, it tends to pull together the scattered bits of color common in early gardens before spring bloom hits its peak.
The variety, Wedgwood, is excellent because it is the color of the sky.
Several different colors are used together to create a distracting effect.
Avoid the noisy bicolors and those unpleasant expensive new mustard yellow and brownish purple combinations completely.
A note on the way things are in the iris world: When Lady Mohr was introduced about 10 years ago at $30, that amount would have bought a thousand Dutch irises.
Lady Mohr now sells for less than one dollar and is still fine.
Valuable Gardening With Iris
In gardening with an iris, never let the cost of an iris determine its value. Cheap ones can become jewels if used properly in your garden.
Somebody else’s iris which may include the newest introductions costing $10 or more apiece, may look tacky and vulgar with cerise peonies, orange lilies, and mixed pansies.
It just requires a lot of restraint and a little planning to give iris a chance to show how beautiful they can be and how delightful they make your garden.