Queen of the Irises

ProfessorRoush has a favorite iris.  Hand's down, no question about it, a definite favorite.  I grow all colors and types of irises.  I maintain approximately forty different varieties that still survive my neglectful gardening.  I'm partial to the purples like 'Superstition', so deep they are almost black.  I fancy the bright sky blue irises such as 'Full Tide'.  I love the soft pink refined splendor of 'Beverly Sills'.  But it is bicolored and vivacious 'Edith Wolford' that holds my iris heart.

I fought long and hard to obtain 'Edith Wolford'.  Every year at the local iris sale I would rush to her spot in the alphabet first, only to be beaten to the spot by a purse-swinging senior lady or to find that all the divisions had been sold privately before the public sale.  A friend finally took pity on me and set aside a fan for me.  Or, as a second friend pointed out, I acquired 'Edith Wolford' by cheating.  A gardener can only sustain the bruises from heavy handbags and bony elbows a few times before he must take preemptive action to end the abuses.

'Edith Wolford' was a 1984 introduction by the late Ben Hager,and she has received all the top American Iris Society awards including the Dykes Medal of Honor (1993), the highest award given.  Hager was the owner of Melrose Gardens in California, and he also hybridized the above-mentioned 'Beverly Sills' (1985 Dykes Medal of Honor).   'Edith Wolford' is the perfect contrast of soft yellow standards and gentle blue falls.  Her beard is a brighter yellow, a beacon to the insects who would steal her pollen.  She even occasionally reblooms.  'Edith Wolford', however, does not always photograph well since cameras tend to make the soft blue falls more purple than they really are.  For example, the top picture on this page was taken on my "good" Canon camera, and the picture at the right was taken on my iPhone.  Both are a little purple-tinged, although the top picture does more closely capture the quality of the canary-yellow standards.

I won't entertain negatives in regards to 'Edith Wolford' in my garden since she grows so well here, but to be fair, other gardeners dismiss her as sickly, sparing of her blooms, slow to grow, and prone to rot.  To those who would be her detractors, I will mangle a quote from the The Hunger Games and suggest, "May your odds with irises be never in your favor." 

Rethinking Iris

Early on, I was of the opinion that Iris sp., particularly the German Iris (Iris germanica) would be the perfect plant for Kansas.  They're drought tolerant, they react to full sun like a cheering squad to a quarterback (think about it!), and they do well in poor soil.  I have two beds of various Iris cultivars mixed in alternating fashion with daylilies and I enjoy the bloom seasons of both.

Struggling iris in wet clay

But the truth is, the Iris in those mixed beds have been both tough to establish and tough to keep going over a period of years.  Both beds are placed in as level an area as I've got, they get well-mulched with prairie hay, and both are based in solid Kansas clay soil.  Translation;  when it rains enough, both beds are a swamp and the Iris drown out while the daylilies love it.  Such a situation occurred this past year when we had an unusually wet spring and early summer.  The iris in these beds and those spotted around some other mixed shrub-perennial beds on the same level are all suffering with small fans adjacent to lots of rotted rhizomes.  Add to that the loss of many of my Iris three years ago during a very late spring, mid-April deep freeze, and the survivors are about 30% of the Iris that I've ever planted.  That's getting expensive on any level.

Happy iris in a raised bed

But in a raised bed on the west side of the house, where the Iris sit near rock landscaping that barely contains the soil of a lilac bed, the Iris are thriving; most were planted only last year when I got a bug for trying some reblooming Iris cultivars, yet they're big and healthy and all are free of rot.  The soil is unamended orange subsoil clay moved there from the house excavation, but the Iris love it all the same.

So, Mother Nature, I assure you that I am listening.  I, just yesterday, selected a sloped area and sprayed an area with glyphosate to kill off the prairie grass for a new bed.  Next week, after the predicted rain on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'll move the wee surviving rhizomes and starts from my other Iris there in hopes of finding them a home more to their liking and I've resolved not to amend the soil for the Iris.   I'll fill in the spots in the old bed with divisions of the daylilies that I like the most.   

Lesson learned: even a seemingly perfect plant for an area needs some consideration of its specific needs and a little labor to get things right.  As someone's website signature recently stated, "the sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, it's brown knees."