Big Bearded Irises

This November the big bearded irises could rightly be subtitled ’The Bold and the Beautiful’. And I, knowing nothing about irises, could equally be considered bold for attempting to write about them.

Time in the Sun

But they’re too beautiful to be ignored, and I seem to have such a range of colours in my garden. I have far too many photographs, too, for these beautiful flowers not to have their time in the sun (a rather apt turn of phrase, since they need sun to be at their flowering best!).

I have controlled the steady supply of irises into the Moosey garden. One year I bought a pot of apricot ones from a country garden sale. They’re planted in their own patch over the water race.

A Mixed Bag of Irises

Another year I proudly ordered ’Five Mixed’ from a mail order catalogue. The big maroons and the big mid-blues came here this way. Then friends have let me take late summer slices off irises in their gardens. And I’ve occasionally taken up, cut, and re-planted existing irises already here - like the bright yellow, and the early-flowering clear blue.

Elder son’s flat provided lots of plain purply-blues. Another country plant fair provided a pale peachy one. And my dearest and oldest gardening friend gave me some plain whites - that was nearly ten years ago.

I know that my irises are ’big’ and ’bearded’ and that’s about all the descriptive writing I can manage! But I have toyed with the idea of having an iris bed - after all, there is enough room here in the Moosey Garden. At the moment my iris collection is scattered around five or six garden beds, while odd ones turn up flowering in my rubbish-pile areas.

I could easily dig a completely new garden - perhaps a strip in the Hazelnut Orchard. Hee hee... I might have created a new late summer project!