From “Intermediate Bearded Irises” in A Guide to Bearded Irises: Cultivating the Rainbow for Beginners and Enthusiasts by Kelly Norris:
“The [intermediate bearded iris] class is home to a motley crew of bearded irises of mixed parentage, a horticultural melting pot that will likely boil over in the coming years as the iris world finds new ways to organize its rich diversity — good news for gardeners who always need more. Until then, its diversity of flower shape and size runs the gamut….The attitude of most iris lovers who love beautiful flowers — the more the merrier. Tolerance is a wonderful thing in the garden.”
Hello!
Iris Season is coming to a close here in the southeast, and this post and the next one will feature the last of my iris photos for 2022. Unless I find more, in which case there will be more.
Soon I’ll go hunting for early summer flowers — lilies, hydrangeas, hibiscus, and lantana for example — and I added some new lilies and a pair of hibiscus to my own garden this year, mainly so I could take their pictures. I had a potted pair of yellow lilies last year — see Epic Lilies (1 of 3) — one of which came back (so got photographed but is in Post-Processing at the moment) and one of which got dug up by satanic squirrels and didn’t survive the winter. While I couldn’t find a matching yellow lily to replace it, I did find one called Summer Sky which has huge flowers in fabulous shades of red and deep pink that is just starting to bloom. The two hibiscus will be a surprise; they both have a couple of dozen unopened flower buds, but it was tagged at the garden center as a “generic hibiscus” so I don’t even know what color the flowers will be. Not that it matters!
But I’m getting ahead of myself… here are the irises:
Thanks for taking a look!