Eye for a beauty
Hearts tend to go aflutter when irises explode with butterfly-like flowers, writes David Overend.
Iris takes its name from the Greek word for a rainbow, which is also the name for the Greek goddess of the rainbow, and when the ground is cold and winter has a grip on the garden, tiny explosions of colour – yellow and blue – herald a change and are filled with the promise of better things to come.
This year, sadly, better things have been in short supply, but anyone lucky enough to have a few irises growing in their garden will at least have been able to appreciate their intense colour and architectural form.
There are many more members of this floriferous family – from the enchanting early-blooming I buchrica to I ensatao, the Japanese clematis-flowered iris, which loves to have its roots in muddy, damp soil, and which has to be seen to be believed.
And, of course, there is the tiny I danfordiae, particularly the vibrant yellow, one of the wonders of the winter garden.
Some, like the Siberian irises, tend to be a bit of a forgotten group. If more people cultivated them, then the message would soon get out that here is a flower just too good not to grow in every garden.
In late spring, clumps of grassy foliage appear and are soon followed by an explosion of butterfly-like flowers.
These are plants that are sturdy and upright, tolerant of wet sites, and will even grow in the shallow water at the edge of a pond or stream.
They are equally happy in tubs and containers, easy to propagate by lifting and dividing every three or four years, and simply stunning to behold.
The iris family is like that – filled with colourful plants which appear at regular intervals throughout the year and, while the earliest are happy to bloom just a few inches above the soil, the summer showoffs stand stately and proud.
The bearded varieties are some of the most sweetly-scented flowers which appear to bask in the sun. They vary in size from 18in in height to giants of five feet or more, but they are all inescapably beautiful.
The flag irises are another breed entirely – they like their roots to be damp, so it pays to provide them with a spot on the margin of a pool or even in the water itself.
Irises are definitely a family worth getting to know.