IRISESTHE TO RESCUE!

Nothing banishes the winter blues – and dreary browns – like irises, the colourful saviours of early spring, says Monty Don

Spring – and especially early spring, which nowadays in our climatically changing world comes to my garden in February – is not awash with colour. We think it is, but in fact your garden and mine are mostly still dominated by the brown of deciduous hedges, trees and shrubs and lots of bare soil. The flowers that there are – snowdrops, primroses, crocus, perhaps early daffodils – are a joy, brightening the darkest day and to be treasured. Yet the overall effect is still of bright points of soft colour in a gardenscape yet to truly awake.

But early irises break that rule. They fairly explode with colour. You can get exquisite, small, jewel-like flowers in softer shades – I have Iris reticulata ‘Katharine Hodgkin’, which has petals washed a pale blue that is delicate and lovely. But in reality it is the vibrancy of the deep blues and purples that transform the garden right now. Nothing else holds a candle to the sheer intensity of their display.

The first to flower for me (and flowering of all my spring bulbs has been noticeably late this year – down, I suspect, to an exceptionally dry autumn and winter) were the deep purple of ‘Pauline’, with its white speckled lower petal, and the not-very-blue ‘Blue Note’. This is the first time I have grown the latter and I like it a lot, although I would describe it as a purple on the blueish end of the scale, whereas ‘Pauline’ is a purple with more red in it. But that is a quibble. They are both life-enhancing.

For a true blue, however – and remember that blue is by far the rarest colour in the garden at any time of year – I would opt for Iris histrioides ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’, which has lovely blue flowers with yellow markings in the centre of the petals, carried on a short stem. I. histrioides ‘Harmony’ is another favourite that is distinctly blue, and ‘Clairette’ is a very pure, pale, almost icy shade of blue. Unlike some of these early irises, all cultivars of I. histrioides flower strongly year after year and I have some, like ‘George’ and ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’, that have reliably returned in full vigour for ten years now.

By mid-march these irises are coming to the end of their flowering season (although ‘JS Dijt’, which has rich burgundy petals, flowers later, so extends the display).

As with all flowering bulbs, it is important to allow the foliage to die back in its own good time, exposing it to as much sunshine as pos- sible. This enriches next year’s bulbs, and the failure of bulbs to flower is as likely to be damage to their post-flowering foliage, deliberate or otherwise, as any other cause.

These early irises are completely hardy – I’ve often had the pots I grow them in frozen solid with frost for days on end. They hate being too wet though, which is why I grow them in pots rather than in a border. I mix a potting compost that’s half grit and half peat-free compost. This may seem absurdly gritty, but they thrive in it.

I plant them any time between the beginning of September and the end of November. They can be left outside as long as they do not get too wet, but I put mine in a glass frame that acts like an umbrella, open to the cold weather but shielded from the wet. The shoots appear around Christmas, and as soon as buds appear I bring a few pots into a greenhouse to force them to flower a little early so we can have an early display, although none of that is really necessary. These are, by and large, hardy little flowers that will grow in grass, a border or an exposed window box as long as they have good drainage.

Monty with irises ‘Blue Note’ (left) and ‘Pauline’