{"id":2506,"date":"2018-09-10T06:07:14","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T14:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2506"},"modified":"2018-09-10T06:07:14","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T14:07:14","slug":"summer-house-iris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/summer-house-iris\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer House Iris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"white<\/a>About ten years ago, a friend gave me \u00a0a single large iris rhizome division.\u00a0 It was from a tall, bearded type that grew in carefree splendor in her western New York garden.\u00a0 I planted it in the free-draining soil at our family\u2019s summer cottage in Central New York and it grew, or maybe \u201cgrew\u201d is the wrong word.\u00a0 \u201cExploded\u201d might be better.\u00a0 Ten years later, we have the offspring of that one iris division everywhere.\u00a0 I divided the original after the first year and I have divided the original divisions many times in the last decade.\u00a0 I just divided an overgrown clump that was overdue for the treatment and had expanded to about two feet in diameter.\u00a0 That operation yielded about twenty new plants and I was hard-pressed to know where to put them all.\u00a0 Fortunately, I have space in my home garden, not to mention iris-loving friends who will take some of those garden orphans off my hands.<\/p>\n

If my prolific white iris was a little less beautiful, this would not be much of a problem.\u00a0 But it is gorgeous.\u00a0 I have no idea of its varietal name, but I think it is relatively old-fashioned, because the flower stalks are not as tall as some of the modern varieties.\u00a0 The plants never need staking and the flowers are also lightly fragrant.\u00a0 In the cold light of day, both the \u201cfalls–downward pointed petals\u2014and the standards\u2014upward-facing petals–look white.\u00a0 When the light is more diffuse, the blooms look very pale blue\u2014as if someone splashed a drop of blue paint in a gallon of white.<\/p>\n

Because we are blessed with such iris abundance, I have planted them everywhere around our summer cottage.\u00a0 On the beach they stand above the water and look like something painted by Monet.\u00a0 Next to the cottage, they complement the gray shingles.\u00a0 In the little bed that we installed around the stump of a long-felled cottonwood tree, the leaves provide texture even when the plant is out of bloom.\u00a0 In short, the white iris succeed everywhere.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I have grown many bearded iris varieties, including a lovely specimen with pale blue standards and pale peach falls.\u00a0 Those iris have multiplied in a well-mannered way and I have divided them as necessary.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I have ever lost one, despite harsh winters, monsoon springs and torrid summers.\u00a0 However, I have never had an iris perform like my summer house iris.\u00a0 The neighboring houses and cottages don\u2019t seem inundated with iris of any kind, but maybe that is because they don\u2019t have my white one\u2014yet.<\/p>\n

I have treated the summer house iris the same way I treat all of its kin.\u00a0 The rhizomes go into the ground with the shallowest covering of soil\u2014about one inch.\u00a0 On clay soil, which I have in my garden, I add fine gravel to the planting mix to ease the drainage.\u00a0 The great enemy of bearded iris is wet feet, which promotes rhizome rot.\u00a0 Iris borers are another common problem, tunneling into rhizomes and destroying them.\u00a0 To outwit the borers, divide iris every few years and check for signs of borers.\u00a0 Discard any soft or damaged rhizomes.<\/p>\n

I have never met anyone with iris as prolific as my summer house specials, but I have often \u00a0come across overgrown clumps.\u00a0 Generally in an overgrown situation, the plants sprout in a ring formation around a non-productive center area.\u00a0 This center is made up of the old, dead rhizomes.\u00a0 To revive your iris, lift the entire ring, which is easy because the roots are shallow.\u00a0 Take a garden knife or other sharp instrument and lop off all the non-productive rhizomes.\u00a0 Save those outer pieces that have fans of leaves attached.\u00a0 Replant them, positioning some in the original location and parceling out the others.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be afraid that you will kill the divisions.\u00a0 Iris look delicate, but they are really very tough.<\/p>\n

Modern bearded iris, including the summer house iris, are descended from Iris germanica or German iris.\u00a0 They are one of those \u201cgrandmother\u2019s garden\u201d species that remind people of earlier generations of gardeners.\u00a0 Not far from our summer property, in a place where the forest has almost engulfed an ancient farmhouse, a stand of bearded iris survives in a clearing.\u00a0 It was probably planted by some farmer or his wife.\u00a0 I doubt that it is as prolific as my white-flowered beauty, but I have no doubt that it is equally sturdy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About ten years ago, a friend gave me \u00a0a single large iris rhizome division.\u00a0 It was from a tall, bearded type that grew in carefree splendor in her western New York garden.\u00a0 I planted it in the free-draining soil at our family\u2019s summer cottage in Central New York and it grew, or maybe \u201cgrew\u201d is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[1946,257,186,1944,551,1945,1947],"class_list":["post-2506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-bearded-iris","tag-deer-resistant-plants","tag-heirloom-plants","tag-iris-germanica","tag-spring-perennials","tag-tall-iris","tag-white-perennials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2508,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions\/2508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}