Tall Bearded Iris ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Rocket’. Leonard and Kathie Jedlicka registered this hybrid in 2009. It grows 48 inches tall and blooms in early to midseason. The blossoms have coral pink standards, coral-tinted orange and lavender style arms, and falls that flare reddish purple with a coral pink edge. The bright tangerine beads have coral pink stripes and fuzzy, upward-arching lavender-pink horns. The ruffled and laced blossoms have a slight sweet fragrance. (Courtesy Agnieszka Kwiecien via Wikimedia Commons)
English Iris latifolia. This Iris species is native to the Pyrenees between France and Spain. It grows 20 inches tall with stiff, sword-shaped leaves that are 24 inches long and dark green to teal in color. In early Summer, it produces two or three deep purple flowers with yellow marks in the lower petals. This is a bulbous iris, not a rhizomatous iris. The bulbs grow 4-to-6 inches deep in the ground. (Courtesy Tournasol7 via Wikimedia Commons)
Tall Bearded Iris ‘Bogdan Khmelnitsky’. Kharchenko introduced this plant in Russia, in 1975. The photo was taken in Moscow State University’s Botanical Garden in 2012. Its name could have been chosen to honor Ruthenian nobleman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1585–1657), who led the Cossacks to victory in an uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The American Iris Society’s Iris Wiki does not include this striking cultivar. (Courtesy Kor!An via Wikimedia Commons)
Tall Bearded Iris ‘Beverly Sills’. In 1978, Ben Haber registered this hybrid from ‘Pink Pirouette’ X ‘Vanity’. It grows 36 inches tall, and blooms midseason. Its blossoms have a laced coral-pink self with a tangerine beard. The American Iris Society honored this cultivar with High Commendation 1979, Award of Merit 1983, American Dykes Medal 1985, and Nelson Award 1986. It also received the Premio Firenze, 1981. (Courtesy Famartin via Wikimedia Commons)
Rhizomes on Tarp. A current project in my garden is to divide and transplant an existing bed of one of my favored tall, bearded irises: ‘That’s All Folks’, which has brilliant gold standards. This snapshot shows numerous rhizomes of this cultivar. We will install seventy-five in a bed along my driveway and share the others through the MBIS’s Annual Iris Sale. (Courtesy Tom Karwin)
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Tall Bearded Iris ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Rocket’. Leonard and Kathie Jedlicka registered this hybrid in 2009. It grows 48 inches tall and blooms in early to midseason. The blossoms have coral pink standards, coral-tinted orange and lavender style arms, and falls that flare reddish purple with a coral pink edge. The bright tangerine beads have coral pink stripes and fuzzy, upward-arching lavender-pink horns. The ruffled and laced blossoms have a slight sweet fragrance. (Courtesy Agnieszka Kwiecien via Wikimedia Commons)
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Iris gardens are now well into the season when rhizomes are to be divided and transplanted. At this time of the year, gardeners respond with enthusiasm to the Monterey Bay Iris Society’s annual rhizome sale, which it will hold on three Saturdays in August.
These events, which include plants grown by Monterey Bay Iris Society members, will be excellent opportunities to add irises to your garden. See the details below.
Today’s gallery of images
We selected photos of iris blossoms from Wikimedia Commons, favoring those with uncommon names and unusual species, and edited captions from the American Iris Society’s Iris Wiki and other sources.
Selecting irises for the landscape
As we wrote before, the iris genus includes 310 species, making it Europe’s largest and best-known genus. These species can be organized in three horticultural groups: bearded, beardless and crested irises.
The genus also includes a subgenus for bulbous irises. The American Iris Society’s Iris Wiki includes this subgenus, but the Dutch Royal Bulbgrowers took over the registration of all bulbs. One example of this subgenus, the English Iris, is in this column’s gallery.
Gardeners have the opportunity — and the challenge — of choosing irises from the numerous species and the great and ever-increasing range of cultivars.
When choosing irises, gardeners should consider where the plant will be installed. When planting in an open area in full sunshine, many irises will grow well. A partially shaded planting area would be best for selected species. When planting in a rock garden or a trough, smaller irises could be a better choice. Some iris species grow well in a bog or water garden.
The American Iris Society’s Iris Wiki has posted a web page, “Landscaping with Iris Species,” still in development. Some irises will succeed in or near water. For example, my garden’s small pond includes a Louisiana iris, ‘Plantation Belle,’ a vigorous plant that I divided during the current season. I replanted three rhizomes in a larger container and contributed six additional rhizomes for the Monterey Bay Iris Society annual sale.
Other criteria for selecting irises include uncommon foliage. The American Iris Society’s Iris Wiki includes species with these unusual leaves. For a list of irises with variegated foliage, visit tinyurl.com/2wef5cae.For irises with purple-based foliage, visit tinyurl.com/3tzekcr6.
My garden includes a swatch of Iris pallida variegata, called the Dalmatian iris, which I first noticed during a European visit. I appreciate its green-and-white, 2-foot-high, variegated foliage. The unimpressive, violet-purple blue flowers have a distinctive grape soda fragrance. I should find the time to divide these plants in my garden and share some rhizomes through the Monterey Bay Iris Society sale.
I also will shop for an iris with purple foliage, just for the unusual effect.
Landscaping with tall, bearded iris
Let’s focus on tall, bearded irises, which are the most popular iris cultivars, and almost certainly by far the largest category of rhizomes available to purchase. The Monterey Bay Iris Society sale certainly will offer many tall, bearded iris rhizomes, and could well have other species available as well.
Whether dividing tall, bearded irises already in your garden or acquiring new cultivars, gardeners can consider landscaping options.
Given the large and ever-expanding range of hybrids, the ease of cultivating tall, bearded irises in open, full-sun beds, and the plant’s propagation every two or three years, gardeners have two broad alternatives.
A popular option is to select and install irises that strike the eye, whether well-established or new introductions. This option leads to a collection of disparate varieties, providing a dazzling array of blossom hues and formats.
When the gardener most enjoys comparing different varieties of irises, this option involves sharing most of the propagated rhizomes with other gardeners.
While I enjoy the numerous varieties of tall, bearded irises, I have developed a swath of a single variety to produce a large effect. While this approach has an aesthetic rationale, it also requires less effort to gather different varieties and maintain records of their cultivar titles.
Another option is to organize different iris varieties by blossom colors in a garden bed. Gardeners can develop appealing landscapes by using a color wheel to organize plants in a preferred harmony. According to one website (htmlcolorcodes.com/color-wheel/), the schemes include analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic, tetradic and square.
Achieving any preferred color harmony is certainly possible, given the color range of iris cultivars, and involves selecting and installing rhizomes with care. The ultimate effect could be pleasing and a positive accomplishment of garden design. The gardener can reconsider the blossom color scheme every three years, when it is time to divide the irises.
In a completely different landscaping approach, the gardener can install tall, bearded irises in small clusters among other plants in the garden. From a visual perspective, the plants’ 3-to-4-foot height contrasts with smaller plants, and clusters of one variety yield spots of color that could work well with adjacent plants.
Advance your gardening knowledge
To explore images from the world of irises, visit Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org) and search for “Iris cultivars by alphabet.”
Another resource is the American Iris Society’s Iris Wiki (www.wiki.irises.org/), an extensive database of iris cultivars organized under several genera and horticultural categories. Searching for a specific cultivar typically leads to both a formal description, registration data, earned awards, and several images of the blossom.
Mark your garden calendar
The Monterey Bay Iris Society’s annual sale of iris rhizomes occurs on three Saturdays in August. The first will be from 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 1. This event will be at the highest level of the Deer Park Shopping Center, 783 Rio Del Mar Blvd., Aptos.
The Monterey Bay Iris Society’s second Saturday date will be at the Aptos Farmers’ Market from 8 a.m. to noon on Aug. 8. The market is located on the highest level of Cabrillo College’s parking structure, at 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos.
The third Saturday sale date will be at the Westside Farmers’ Market, from 8 a.m. to noon, Aug. 15. This site is located at the intersection of Mission Street Extension and Western Drive, near the northern border of the city of Santa Cruz.
These sales are fully organized and staffed by Monterey Bay Iris Society volunteers, who also propagated and shared an impressive variety of iris rhizomes. The selection includes fairly recent introductions as well as well-established cultivars. As noted above, the sale features tall, bearded irises and will include some different iris species.
The Monterey Bay Iris Society shares its members’ iris rhizomes to encourage and support gardeners to grow these desirable plants in their landscapes. They offer the rhizomes at reasonable prices. The revenues support the society’s activities, which include guest speakers and other monthly meeting activities, and annual purchases of iris introductions, which the members propagate to share with the organization’s members and include in annual sales.
In addition to acquiring irises at these sales, consider joining the Monterey Bay Iris Society (www.montereybayiris.org) to socialize with other gardeners and learn about irises.
Tom Karwin is a past president of Friends of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and the Monterey Bay Iris Society, a past president and Lifetime Member of the Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society, a Lifetime UC Master Gardener (Certified 1999-2009), past board member of the Santa Cruz Hostel Society, and a current member of the Pacific Horticultural Society and other garden-related societies. To review the archive of recent On Gardening columns, visit www.santacruzsentinel.com/ and search “Karwin.” Visit ongardening.com to review columns from 2012–2020 (and eventually) from the following years. Please send comments or questions to gardening@karwin.com.
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