The irises were stunning and the company was great for the American Iris Society's national tour gardens this year. Headquartered in Falls Church, VA., the wonderful gardens surrounded the nations capitol with colorful irises enjoyed by bus loads of delighted collectors.
Our feature article this issue takes a different approach to garden design. We're displaying some of the scenes from the gardens on tour. We're especially highlighting iris cultivars that drew the crowds in tight circles surrounding clumps of bloom. These irises ranged from large to small and from newer to older -- a good balance as you add many of these registrations to your perennial collections.
Pictured here, SUMMER RADIANCE and GOLDEN CREME from the garden of Don and Ginny Spoon, demonstrates an excellent method of color coordination in planting design. If you plant irises that both contrast and share colors at the same time, you'll have a unified design that also highlights the plantings' unique qualities.
Convention attendees found the display gardens at Blandy Experimental Station in Boyce, VA to be a pleasurable bloom buffet that complemented the historical setting. The rolling lawn gave the iris enthusiasts complementary vistas of well-grown specimen plantings and old country sights.
When you're choosing your iris additions, be sure and take a "stand back" approach to some of your cultivars. Add some bright, warm colors, as seen here with CELTIC GLORY, to your collection that will grab the garden visitor from several yards away. These aggressive colors will pull your friends into the garden with their arresting hues.
Blandy also displayed two irises that you might add to your collection because of their up-close appeal. The color shifts and combinations seen in LIP SERVICE and GRAPE SODA would add visual complexity to your collection. These colorful combinations add thoughtful pauses to our garden walks as we study the patterns and changes in colors within the plants.
Blandy Experimental Station. AIS members enjoying the tour and CELTIC GLORY
Blandy Experimental Station. LIP SERVICE
Fairfax Community College garden displayed not only amazing irises in compact settings but also demonstrated how public places can bring the bloom season to thousands of people who may be experiencing their first serious iris collection.
Attracting many appreciative iris collectors, OASIS PATCHES will add texture to your own garden display with its intriguing pattern on the falls and standards. Also, juxtapose the colors of your plantings with cool contrasting with warm hues. If you place one version of lavender beside another, they both tend to disappear. However, when you place a subtle purple next to a shocking orange, both irises' colors will complement one another and you'll see each's characteristics better.
Often you'll want to add irises to your garden design for their drama. Looking at STARSHIP ENTERPRISE and FANCY FRIENDS we see two such registrations that draw the garden visitor to them with their striking appeal. These interesting moments can give a sense of dominance to an otherwise cluttered collection of equal looking flowers. Likewise, once we looked at the show stoppers like these two, we're ready to take on the other pleasures on a garden tour.
Fairfax Community College garden. OASIS PATCHES
Fairfax Community College garden. STARSHIP ENTERPRISE and FANCY FRIENDS
Kurt and Sonia Kuppert's garden, located in Fredricksburg, VA, demonstrates why we just can resist featuring newer cultivars in our collections. Newer irises with their interesting developments lead the serious perennial collector to examine where the hybridizers are taking the genus. We love to feature these as part of our garden designs and they often forecast where our collections are heading over the next few seasons.
Kuppert garden. AMIABLE and THREE STRIKES
The garden of Jack and Rosalie Loving in Fredricksburg, VA, was both a beautiful collection as well as enlightning one with its perfect balance of current and older cultivars. We can take some good direction from this garden collection as we develop our own garden design featuring both proven and recent introductions. We'll focus on many of their beautiful older cultivars in the upcoming Eureka Iris Reference Guide but for this Newsletter, we're going to feature a few of their newer cultivars on display.
Variation often gives a good garden design the appeal to walk through and re-walk through a garden setting as seen here with TURN A PHRASE, HAPPY AGAIN, DEVIL DAVID and BLACK SUITED. With so many classifications of irises available, we would all be remiss if we ignored the richness that Siberian and other iris sections add to the garden design. When tall bearded displays are weeks away or long past, our garden landscape can be greatly improved by bringing as many iris classes into our gardens as will perform well in our area.
Also, look to contrasting intensities to set off one another like the bright, pastel and dark colors below do when viewed together in the garden setting. Nothing makes a soft pastel more subtle looking than seeing it next to a black bloom.
Loving garden TURN A PHRASE and HAPPY AGAIN
Loving garden. DEVIL DAVID and BLACK SUITED
The garden Lois Rose in Parlow, VA. drew the careful study of serious iris collectors with its beautiful blooms. It helps any garden design to have both featured clumps of particular cultivars as well as "rivers" of blooms as in the irises below, LAVENDER FAIR, SHAKER'S PRAYER and HALOIN ROSEWOOD. Many of us are too quick to dig up and divide an established planting when it matures.
If we have something as productive as SHAKER'S PRAYER in our gardens for many years, why not spread them out along a backdrop to give the eye a lengthy vista of bloom? If you have the room, these flowing plantings will add much to your garden design without competing with the featured clumps near the fronts of the flower beds.
Rose garden. LAVENDER FAIR
Rose garden. SHAKER'S PRAYER and HALOIN ROSEWOOD
The garden of Jim and Gina Schroetter located in Fredicksburg, VA displayed irises growing in a wooded setting. We often overlook the shaded sections of our yards as we design our garden plan. These areas can become a very important part of the overall appeal as these two cultivars demonstrate.
Schroetter garden. SKY RAIN, LIAISON and SUNNY REFLECTION
What would gardens be without rain showers. Umbrellas and blooms pop up like angels' wings at Don, Ginny and Brian Spoon's garden located in Cross Junction, VA. While we all don't have this much room to display so many wonderful perennials, their collection gave a broad survey of how varied a large collection can be with all its many pleasures.
They had such a representation of the iris world that it took two days to see the displays and we still couldn't take in all the beauty of their garden. While irises do well in rain, all of these blooms pictured here demonstrate how well these particular cultivars did. You'll want to add some of these sturdy stems, falls and standards to your garden design because you know they'll hold up well to the storms as you can see here in these photos. Each bloom was dripping with rain but these cultivars proved their value with dependable strength and substance -- good characteristics for the plants to fill our garden designs and excellent traits for the friends we make in these tour gardens.
Spoon garden. AGGRESSIVELY FORWARD
Spoon garden. DELIRIUM and ANGELIC GLOW
Spoon garden. CRAFTED
Spoon garden. FLIGHTS OF FANCY and MY JOLIE
