Bearded Iris and roses

Another plant I 'collect' is Bearded Iris. I've got 27 different ones now, including ones that are known breeders... a colleague of mine and I are interested in hybridising beardies too. I like these mixed in with roses but have not found a workable solution getting them handle the deep mulch that the roses like but which they detest. As a result I have moved most away from the roses to put in a barren strip of dirt along my driveway... where they are thriving, but I would like to mix them better with the roses... so far I have just scrapped the mulch away from the ones around the roses and that seems to be working OK... and the ones left in the rose gardens seem to doing OK... but it's not ideal... so I was wondering if anyone else had any bright ideas ?



My other ones... there's one not on the list yet (note... single quotes (i.e. '*') indicate positive IDs, double quotes (i.e. "*") indicate the ID may not be correct.

'Ruffles Supreme'
"Hampton Gold"
'Persian Berry'
'Double Shot'
'Witches Sabbath'
'Total Obsession'
'Royal Celebrity'
'Decolletage'
'Serene Duet'
'Coral Point'
'Schortman Garnet Ruffles'
'Silk Romance'
'Pemcaw'
'Lady Friend'
'Pacific Peach'
'Royal Pink'
'Pebbles Fresh'
'Peaceful Waters'
'Premier Editiion'
'Dodge City'
'Planned Treasure'

You can see most of these on the Impressive Irises website listed below.

Oh I love Breaded Iris just as much if not more than roses! My grandfather collects them and had quite a few but as he use to sell them people would grab them all and he being a bit of a soft touch would sell them and not have any left for himself! I know he had Lady Friend, Witches Sabbath and maybe Double Shot. He just grows them in his mixed borders and doesn't use a lot of heavy mulch but Ive found generally that the main thing they need is very good drainage and as long as the mulch isnt covering the rhizomes they are ok. Maybe you could try giving each one their own little mound in with the roses? Just to help keep the mulch a bit thinner around them.

I have about a dozen so far. They are - In Town, Montevideo, Light Beam, Painted Blue, Beach Girl, Titan Glory, Forbidden Fruit, Hidden Treasure (which is very much like your Planned Treasure, a relative maybe?), Crowned Heads, Pink Bubbles, Silver Fox, Sweet Hart, Mary Davis. Ill have to try and get photos of them this year.
Maybe we could swap a few some time Simon?

Simon, love your Bearded Iris, used to grow them back in the 1960's but from your pix there are a lot of new colours.

Any chance of getting some corms from you? if not then who has a good selection to choose from. Could swap you a few bullet proof roses for them.
I budded 20 Gigantea and only ended up with 10 so have 8 over. Anyone pollinating want one of these. They were budded April 2009 and activated last month, already have 100mm shoots. They might rival Jacks Bean Stalk for growth.

Wow! They are beautiful iris Simon. You will have to show them to Abbi 'cos she is big into iris too.
I also have a few scattered here and there among the roses. I agree it is a challenge keeping their rhizomes exposed.. Ripley'sidea of putting them on a mound sounds a good idea.

Simon, I would to swap Iries too in the future. I love them too.

I'm an Iris fan too, and would love to put them among the roses, but knowing how quickly they spread I think they would overcrowd too much.
Simon, yours are beautiful, and I haven't got any of them, nor any of yours, Ripley.
The ones I have are Superstition, Shars Court, Sound of Gold, Lena Baker, I Feel Good, Winsome Dancer, Tahitian Affair, Figurehead, Mer du Sud, Babylon Queen, Loyal Devotion, Milk on Apricots, Boudoir, Dance for Us, Faint Praise, G'Day Mate, Local Colour, Into the Wilderness, Cloud Berry, Comic Strip, Hot Gossip, Going My Way, Green Prophecy, Excite Me, Reality, High Roller, Chardonnay & Ice, Night Game, Alabaster Unicorn, Crazy For You, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Act Three, Gaelic Jig, Epicentre, Magician's Apprentice, Conjuration, Samurai Silk, Picante, Flights of Fancy, Fancy Dress and Deja Blue.
That's what were in the garden last year, and I hope they're all still there. I notice some of them have only grown very short leaves so far so I wonder if they are doing OK. Only a few have bloomed as yet ( last year.)
I found a few buds happening today!

Gee, You have got a lot Val

Been busy the last few days... Eliza (number one child) has been off doing her circus performing (the kids and I all do a lot of circus stuff... so much fun... number one daughter is especially good at it... number one son is a good clown ) for the last week so we've been running around doing rehersals, and makeup and shows, and back stage stuff... been fun but glad today is the last show!

I tried the bare mounded bit... the problem I found, that I hope to fix today actually, is that I have a lot of (big) chickens and ducks and I let them free-range around the property. They scratch through the rose gardens and bury everything... I'm doing a it of fencing today and making a new yard to direct the chickens down into the back paddock instead if into the gardens or around the house, so hopefully things will be a little cleaner from today on... the chickens come right into the house if you leave the door open so you can imagine the mess they leave everywhere

My beardies are pretty new and so haven't spread much yet... as rhizomes spread you guys are welcome to some Some varieties increase faster than others. Bruce... I have two plants of gogantea now... one from a bud I thought was dead, and one bought plant. Both growing strongly now. Am impressed by their rate of growth. Also bought 'Lorraine Lee'... it is interesting to see the new growth of gigantea and 'Lorraine Lee' side-by-side. They are almost identical... looks like the apple doesn't fall far from teh tree when using gigantea as a parent The colleague I spoke of above, wants to start an iris mailorder nursery down here... so he has been collecting them for a long time and is starting to look at hybridising and I am collecting them too so that we can pool our resources and he can harvest rhizomes for his nursery as well (as I have more land than he does). He has some truly beautiful iris and I am the lucky one who gets to go through his garden each year to take catalouge photos for him... I love that! Almost got through his whole collection now and will start putting something together soon.

I have been using this place to buy my beardies.... they are lovely people, and offer excellent service: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] . I like these guys as they comment on the fertility of good breeders too... great from a breeding perspective. They also sell them on Ebay at the same rate as they do through their website which makes buying them very quick and easy. The Ebay range is not a big as their website range but they are still nice ones, and cheap as chips: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Simon I can't believe how busy you must be - and now circus performing! Do you have more hours in the day than the rest of us? LOL
That would be a nice job, taking photos of lovely irises!
You reminded me how the irises don't like their rhizomes covered, and I went around unburying mine this morning - thanks for that! I don't know how they manage to get down so deep, maybe the birds dig around and cover them, and the rain washes soil around I guess. Anyway they are exposed now. I did a count up and they all seem to be there still

No... no extra time... sleep is over rated Circus is something the kids do mainly... I just muck around with poi and diablo.

Have your iris started growing yet? Any buds? Mine are only just starting to shoot.

Yes Simon, I have a few buds on the irises. A couple of them are 3 yrs old, the rest are from last year. I had a look at the link you put on here. A lot of the irises there seem to be bred by a chap called Blyth. The family own an iris farm near us, we went to their open day and came home with a few!
Some of mine are really short still, and some have grown taller than them, they all have new growth.
I reckon there might be as many Bearded Iris as there are roses!! What do you think?

I think the random growth pattern can just be put down to differences in growth habits between different varieties... same as with roses. I too have a few that are a good 40-50cm tall already and others that are no more than 10cm tall with leaves just breaking. I was looking at an iris website the other day Val that said Australia has a very well established and respected iris breeding tradition... so could well be the same people. I hope one day that the same can be said for roses in Australia.

The one that isn't pictured in my list above is a heritage beardie... hasn't flowered for me yet and I'm really looking forward to it... love the real old beardies

Oh that's exciting, Simon. I look forward to seeing that one in a photo!
I don't know much about them except that I love them and get swept away with their glorious colours. I didn't know there were heritage beardies.

Check this website out Val: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It's really nice, very well written, and all about heritage beardies.

Thanks Simon. I have bookmarked it to read tomorrow. My bed is calling me!

I love iris too. I had over 100 different ones in NSW, and I dug up bits here and there to bring with me.

They had to be scrubbed for hours with a toohbrush to ensure they were soil free and all foliage had to be cut right back to the rhizome, to satisfy quarantine regulations. they were all inspected.

In spite of this harsh treatment, plus being dug up at the wrong time of the year, they are growing foliage happily now. Trouble is, I won't know what's there until they flower!

I used to just scrape mulch and soil off mine, to let the sun get to their backs, but then I had one patch in the shade of a big spruce tree, with no sun on their base at all, and they still flowered.

Mine mostly came from an iris farm in NSW called "Granite Grove".

If they grow successfully, I'll be happy to swap too, Simon and Ripley.

Mine are slow this year, I have 2 of the common white ones out ATM

Oh Abbi, fancy having to leave so many behind, what a shame. What a chore too -getting the ones ready that you did bring with you.

They are tough old things arent they! People dont like them because they 'only' flower from oct - nov and yet people go crazy for camellis and rhodos I dont get it. and the more varieties you have (space permitting) the longer you can make the iris season. I dont mind plants that only flower once a year, makes the time they are out that much more special, thats why I love the old variety roses, the once bloomers.

There are a lot of beardies that repeat flower now Rip. 'Double Shot', the one I photographed and posted here, is a repeat flowering beardie. That photo was taken at the end of Autumn.

Yeah I noticed alot of descriptions mentioning repeat blooms. Ive been looking at this website [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] They seem to have a great selection and extra info for hybridising like Impressive Irises. I received an email from the lady saying that they only send two shipments to tassie, 1 in January and 1 at the end of March as they have to do a 4hr round trip to get them fumigated. She also said if I get my order in before the end of oct and pay a 20% deposit it will guarantee my order for then. So now i have time to save and go thru them all and pick out what I want.

If anyone wants to join orders to save on the postage ($25) we could work something out.

Maybe you could start a separate section for Irises on the forum Simon. There seems to be a fair bit of interest in them. Although if you add Irises where do you stop..

I have just finished my iris order for this year... bought these ones over the last few days... pretty excited about these actually because the order includes some dwarf ones... I've never tried them before and they look awesome. There's only one more iris I'd like this year; 'McKellar Grove'. It's an intense orange that is recommended as a fertile breeder as both a pollen parent and seed parent.

These are the new ones:

Tall, Median, and Intermediate Beardies:

'Cycles'
'Concertina'
'Eagle Flight'
'Candy Rock'
'Corps de Ballet'
'Chico Maid'
'Faux Pas'
'Glitzy'
'Beyond'
'Gold Kist'
'Devil May Care'
'Mara'
'April Fog'

Dwarf Beardies (20-30cm):

'Cats Eye'
'Face Paint'
'Artful'
'Canadian Kisses'
'Dawn Hush'
'Posing'

I was thinking of that Rip... I think maybe a new forum might be in order... if someone else would like to make it and host it I can show them how

Until then there is always: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I like the look of these ones Rip and Val: Crowned Heads, Pink Bubbles, I Feel Good, High Roller, Epicentre, and Fancy Dress. Some real beauties in this list.

Thanks for the website for the Iries, Simon. I spent most of my computer time last night looking at them. My favorites are the pinks and Lavenders, but others too. Also I love Japanese Irises, and they had a few. I grew a couple once and they were great to grow.
Thats a lovely list of Iries you have picked out. I am still paying for roses at the moment, but I will pick a few that I think are the prettiest to buy soon. I will try to anyway. There is a lady on the other side of Mudgee that sells Iries, when I have gone there I always go too late after she has sold most of them. She is a collector of them and has photos of all of them in photo albums. This year I will go early. Thanks for reminding me. They use to be $5. each. I have about 10 or more varieties here.

I had a look at Impressive Irises ebay shop when you recommended it Simon and bought "Pass The Wine", "Silverado", "Corps de Ballet", and my fav "Shy Glance" This is a pic from the catalogue
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