When all else fails, garden

Despite all my best plans, life requires more of me than just puttering in my garden, planting and feeding and admiring my iris, and writing my favorite blog about gardening. Indeed, all the things other than my garden are often the reason I so desperately yearn to get back to my garden and revel in its restorative beauty.

'Fortunata' (Joseph Ghio, R. 1985) Sdlg. 79-125-O. TB, 38" (97 cm), E-L. S. melon; F. cool white, melon rim and shoulders; tangerine beard. 'Artiste' X 'Private Label'. Bay View Gardens 1986. Honorable Mention 1989.

It has been a remarkable year, as I look back at my blog postings, photos, and out into my yard. Not only did we plant our experimental garden of kiddie pools, re-purposed tires, and (hopefully) gopher-proof raised beds, but so much has happened in the world. So many public figures and close friends have passed on, the election was a tumult no matter what stance you take, and personally, there has been so much upheaval, drama, excitement (both good and not so good) and commotion in my life that garden therapy has become my saving grace.

'Alien Mist' ( Cy Bartlett, R. 1998). Seedling HD-IQ 1. TB, height 37" (94 cm), Midseason bloom. Ruffled very pale blue self; beards bright medium blue violet, horned; slight sweet fragrance. 'Howdy Do' X 'Inca Queen'. Sutton 1998.

I don’t have a routine or schedule for gardening; I often have to squeeze in projects and maintenance around other obligations, and I know this is true for so many of my friends and fellow-gardeners. That’s unfortunate, both because the number of hours my garden wants from me and the number I can provide are usually not the same (with the deficit showing in weeds and untidy beds), but also because the benefits of being in my garden extend beyond the well-being and beauty of the flowers into the well-being and beauty of the soul. Big words, but it’s true for me.

There is something so healing in a freshly turned bed. Even just clean dirt makes my heart happy. Planting is wonderful therapy, even if the rewards are only visible one season a year (for non-re-blooming iris). Weeding an area, and stepping back to see how the plants can now stretch, and grow, and thrive… it polishes up the tarnish that day-to-day living splashes on us in little bits all day long.

'Coral Point' ( George Sutton, R. 1999). Sdlg. G-67. TB, 37" (94 cm), Midseason late bloom. Ruffled and laced pale pink (RHS 56D); beards coral, pink horn; slight musky fragrance. 'Sky Hooks' X F-257: (2-14A: ( 'Pink Ember' x 'Playgirl') x 'Twice Thrilling'). Sutton 2000.

The garden is a place where my mind and soul work together to feel the power and grace of nature. Harmony of the living body and the living dirt is a meditation that results in inner and outer beauty. And, at the end of a day in the garden, there is that lovely, lasting, tangible result that others can see, and share, and appreciate. It’s a lot harder to show your friends how great chanting “Om” makes you feel, but they can all appreciate gorgeous flowers, shady paths, and well-tended beds.

I can’t say when or where I noticed that gardening was good for my soul. I am grateful for the understanding, though. When work comes home with me in an unwelcome way, when stress and traffic and responsibility get too tiring, when I need to feel something more tangible, more basic, more real, I can go into my garden, and shed the rest of the world from my thoughts. I can erase the yuck, and embrace the muck. I shall always turn to my garden for the generous way it rewards my efforts.

'Sunshine Boy' (Frank Foster, R. 1985). Seedling #79-25. IB, Height 25" (64 cm), Early thru late bloom. Standards lemon cream; falls white, deep yellow markings and lines around hafts and orange beard; ruffled; pronounced spicy fragrance. 'Beau' X 'White Lightning'. Pod and pollen fertile. Vagabond Gardens 1986. Honorable Mention 1988. Award of Merit 1990.

One Year Later; A Brief Report

As much as I adore Spring, when iris really have their season, I enjoy the anticipation and excitement of fall, watching and waiting for rebloomers to appear and show off their special genes. Inspecting my beds, I am surprised and delighted by which blooms are flagrantly coloring my otherwise drab fall landscape, and also checking my database to see which rebloomers are lazily missing their fall display, opting instead to nap through the seasons without the parade and dazzle. Of course I’m playing a guessing game why some rebloomers are in full riot and others are hibernating. Location, watering throughout the year, fertilizing, what kind of bed, and amount of daylight are variables at play, so it will of course remain something of a mystery. The flowers in bloom keep me excited for the big event in Spring, and the enigmatic sleepers keep my problem-solving mind engaged in the mystery. What’s not to love?

As for the garden overall, somehow a year has elapsed since Chris and I began our project of raised beds, kiddie pool beds, and re-purposed tire beds. It was a hot, dry year, during which I blithely purchased a coffee-house and bakery, so I didn’t chronicle the progress and processes of each kind of bed with the same detail I gave to, say, our hybridizing. But, I do have a report of how things went, which ideas worked, which need tweaking and which I really loved. For the sake of accuracy, I am showing you the beds as they are, warts and all. I am clearly behind in my weeding and clean up, so you don't need to remind me, I know, I know!

The kiddie pools, well, those were the most mixed results of the group. I loved that they were portable, and off the ground. We did have moisture control issues with them, though. A bit too wet when it was rainy (which we mostly resolved with more drainage holes), and hard to keep evenly (and adequately) watered with drip alone during the hot months. I think I lost 40% of the rhizomes in the one set of kiddie pools. The other set had a different kind of drip, and had more regular watering, and grew 700% more weeds, but I think I only lost two out of 40 rhizomes from those pools. I will try the pools again, adjusting the type of soil, the drip emitters themselves, and the amount and frequency of watering… maybe we can get better results from all the pools this year.

This bed started out with a few more rhizomes than we have now, but we caught that it wasn't getting 

enough water pretty early on. Now we just have to watch for it getting soggy in heavy rain. 

Please disregard all the weeds. They are on my to-do list, I promise.

The raised beds were easy and successful, but we did not treat the wood for fear that any sealants/paints used to preserve the wood would emit harmful gasses into the soil and damage the roots or rhizomes. That means I may only get one more year out of the beds before the wood falls apart. The raised beds performed brilliantly, with good drainage and the roots seemingly remained cool. The performance from those beds was excellent.

The raised beds were greatly successful, and when we add more this year, we will be using more amendments in the soil. 

Once again, please do not let the weeds distract you from the iris.

To my surprise, the painted tires made fantastic beds. Although we only put two or three rhizomes in each tire, they all did quite well, and I will have to separate all of them this year. So, an upside is their health and performance, and a downside is that you can only fit a few rhizomes in, and they need to be separated yearly. One other reason I really like the tires is that I can say “everything in this tire is ____ rhizome” and not worry that my Revere crept into the Huckleberry Fudge. No growing from one zone into another. Plus, for creative types, you can paint the tires fun colors. I don’t simply because I want the blooms to be the most colorful feature in the garden. (And I chose a light color to reduce the heat to the tire itself.)

Despite heavy use of Preen, the weeds came in this Fall with gusto. Turns out everything grows well in the tires. 

We will definitely do more tires this year!

I will be planting my 400+ new rhizomes differently than this first batch. I am going to add more amendments to keep the soil softer (even this good loamy soil gets hard in our extreme summer heat), and instead of planting by bloom season (left to right, early, mid, and late blooms), I am planting by colors. Whole beds of whites, next to beds of pale yellows, followed by beds of bright yellows… I am excited to see if we can create a panorama of color throughout the season.

We also will be adding another 20 or so raised beds for the seeds from our 2016 hybridizing. We ended up with well over 1400 seeds, and even limiting ourselves to 16 seeds planted per pod, it is going to be a significant undertaking. They’re all happily in their soup containers in our project refrigerator. Mid-January, we will start their planting. That leaves me how long to get my database updated and ready? Oh boy, I’d better get going!

In the meantime, back outside I go, to see my rebloomers. The promise they make for an amazing Spring is my inspiration to keep going, even when it gets cold and windy. What can I say, I’m a sucker for the big show!

And, because I love sharing photos, here are some rebloomers, going off right now!

'Orange Juice' (Michael Sutton, R. 2009). Seedling #R-687-A. TB, 33" (84 cm). Midseason bloom and rebloom. 

Standards orange flushed pink at midribs; style arms orange; falls creamy orange, white area at end of tangerine beards; pronounced sweet fragrance. 

'Return Address' X 'Tropical Delight'. Sutton 2010.

'For Your Love' (Larry Lauer, R. 2002). Seedling #365-2. IB, 18" (46 cm), Early midseason bloom. 

Ruffled white with light blue cast; style arms light blue; beards yellow with white end and base; pronounced sweet fragrance. 

'Chubby Cheeks' X 'Pacific Destiny'. Lauer 2002.

'Chatter' (Joseph Ghio, R. 1992). Sdlg. 88-11C. TB, 34" (86 cm), Early to Midseason bloom. 

Standards yellow orange overlaid fuchsia rose; Falls yellow orange ground, fuchsia rose sanding at edge; beards burnt tangerine. 

('Romanticist' x 82-113G, 'Chuckles' sib) X 'Storyline'. Bay View 1993.

Truth and Consequences, and the need for both

Once again, as I begin writing the collection of deep and significant lessons I have learned as a gardener of iris, I am humbled, awed, and pooped. Apparently, I like this state of affairs as I am in no way considering a change to my gardening circumstances. I have a large garden, and as you know, with iris that means that it’s always expanding. I don’t keep up with all the associated chores, but scaling back is not my plan. While I love the idea of being “done” planting, or weeding, or feeding, I must acknowledge that it’s probably not in the cards for me. That’s the truth.

I admire the iris gardeners who get their orders of new rhizomes and dash out to the (already prepared beds) and lovingly, carefully plant those new iris in the long-ago designated order and space where they belong. I have nothing but respect for the gardeners who seem to have conquered weeds, leaf spot, excess increases, and the laws of time, and post the pictures of their impeccable, immaculate, gorgeous and altogether perfect looking iris beds. I don’t know how they do it, I truly don’t.

Even when I was not working, I did not manage to have perfect beds, or feed or weed on a timely schedule. I created a lot of beauty, but it was always squeezed in between the other things I was doing in my life, and never, except on day one, do my beds look groomed, or tended. Sometimes they don’t even look like beds that were planted on purpose. Things around here can get that feral look pretty quickly.

Scroll back in time to see how these looked when they were first planted... Feral is the right word for the current conditions

But I do have the ambition to plant my rhizomes as soon as they arrive. And I know I’m not alone. I know some of you have rhizomes growing—nay—thriving where you put them down “just until you can get them planted”… I believe that I’m not the only one who pots new rhizomes with the promise to “get them into the ground when the weather cools off a bit” and then ends up creating a drip system to water all those potted iris… I am certain that I’m not the only one who finds a box in the garage sometime in September, or October and opens it to find a cluster of dried and cranky rhizomes that have been completely forgotten in the midst of everything else that has to get done which sadly comes before gardening. That’s the consequence.

I do a lot of apologizing to my rhizome orders, or rather, to the unopened boxes they ship in. I often resent the parts of my life that require my time and attention and keep me from planning and executing those perfect beds of perfect arrangement and perfect sun, water, and exposure conditions. How dare I have to eat, and sleep, and go to work? How dare that new business I bought in May take up so much of my time… it’s bloom season! Or, it’s digging season! Or, it’s new order arrival season! Or it’s separating season, or planting season, or weeding season… It’s not realistic for me to ignore my life, and so, I squeeze in iris time whenever and wherever I can.

So I freely admit that I have slam-planted about half the iris that I have ordered into raised beds in the shade, in no particular order, after soaking them for a day or two because they sat for (up to) 6 weeks in boxes in my hot garage. I also admit that I received orders from vendors I did not remember actually ordering from (and I just found out I still have one more shipment headed my way, egad!). And I must also disclose that shopping from the comfort of my couch in the midst of those long, cold winter evenings means that I’m receiving more iris than a team of us could prep for and plant in a timely fashion.

This is the punk-rock of planting iris. I make a nice soil mixture, I put them in the shade, and
I plant them in whatever order I grab them out of the box.
Unorthodox, but they have name tags, and in they’re in a bed, so I’m satisfied for now

The good news is that the rhizomes (mostly) forgive me. I break all the rules, and they still grow for me. I neglect them. I overheat them. I ignore them. I am in all ways a bad iris mom. So far, they look a little dry, they aren’t as lush or green as they could be, and they certainly aren’t going to be re-blooming this fall. But they’re in decent soil, and they make new green shoots, and they turn out to be just the right plant for the kind of gardener I am these days. Which is humbled, awed, and pooped.

And, the new rhizomes are slowly but surely getting planted in temporary raised beds, and labels are being made simultaneously (which is certainly part of the delay in planting, in my feeble defense), and I suspect I’ll have all the 2016 orders in the ground before, oh, September eighth? Maybe as late as the tenth? I’m pretty happy with that, since “in the ground” is a major step in the right direction. The truth is I love iris, so I embrace this chaos. The consequence is that I sometimes garden after dark, and make labels on my lunch hour.

Run out of real name tags? No problem. There are always plastic knives around. Note the not luscious green leaves
on some of the rhizomes. Trust that the roots look fantastic. No, really. They do.

Once I’m done planting the new ones, I can consider separating, replanting, and moving some of the plants from our project from last year… Oh yeah! Those!

And, because we need inspiration when all we see is dirt and dry leaves and name tags, here are some pictures of the iris that bloomed earlier this year. My gosh I love them so...

Natural Blonde, and a close-up to show the iridescence

'Natural Blond' ( Joseph Ghio, R. 2002). Seedling #97-24B3. TB, 36" (91 cm), Early midseason bloom. Warm creamy peach, with light peach sherbet standards center, heart, and falls shoulders; beards peach, tangerine base. Seedling #95-29U2: (seedling #89-89R2: ( 'Lightning Bolt' x ( 'Stratagem' x 'Bygone Era')) x Shoop seedling #89-23-2: ( 'Tropical Magic' x sibling)) X seedling #93-40J3: ( 'Heaven' x seedling #91-92B2: (( 'Birthday Greetings' x 'Bubbling Along') x ( 'Birthday Greetings' x 'Presence'))). Bay View 2003. Honorable Mention 2005

'Coal Seams' ( Schreiner R. 2013) Sdlg. MM 425-1. TB, 41" (104 cm), Midseason bloom. Standards dark purple (RHS 89B); Falls slightly darker purple (89A); beards dark purple. 'Badlands' X GG 378-A: ( 'Dark Passion' x 'Thunder Spirit'). Schreiner 2013. Honorable Mention 2015

'Suspicion' ( Keith Keppel, R. 1998). Seedling 93-83H. TB, 38" (97 cm), Mid bloom season. Standards greyed greenish yellow (M&P 19-DE-1), central area blended aster violet (45-F-7); style arms greenish yellow (19-C-1), lavender lip; falls light greenish yellow (19-B-1), slightly darker margins (19-C-1) and shoulders (20-K-1), giving russet green to oil yellow (12-L-1) effect; beards yellow (10-L-6); pronounced sweet fragrance. 'Wishful Thinking' X 'Spring Shower'. Keppel 1999.