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The Giant Oat Grass inhabits high, dry ground in southern Europe and, although I have never seen it in the wild, I can imagine them rising above their companions in the steppe. This is how they like to be, in the company of plants that do not overshadow the tussock of evergreen foliage and where in the longest days of the year they take the light and hold it in a hovering suspension of coppery awns.
The stipa is an old favourite. I grew it first and en masse as an early emergent in the Barn Garden at Home Farm. We used the pockets amongst the old cobbles where previous buildings had been razed to the ground and allowed the oat grass to lead the mood in June. I let the Californian poppy seed through a sprawl of Potentilla ‘Gibson’s Scarlet’ at its feet and the rusty spears of Digitalis ferruginea ascended up into the cloud to score the vertical. I have the Stipa here too, also by our barns and growing in nothing but rubble and subsoil where they stand head and shoulders above their companions. To play on the dilapidated mood of the rusty buildings they are teamed with evening primrose and the tiny pinpricks of a wild dianthus.
Spearing at speed from the basal foliage as the days lengthen, the stipa are a litmus in this race to the longest day. Angling up and out so that there is sufficient room for the flowers to take their own space when they break the tall tapers, they head into a miraculous fortnight of flower. The panicles open out at head height to form a cage through which the wind can easily pass. The golden moment is the week the anthers furnish themselves with pollen, dangling free and on tiny hinges for mobility and ease of distribution for wind-blown pollen.
Though it strikes a particular mood of dry airiness in the garden, Stipa gigantea goes with almost anything if you pick it and bring it inside for closer observation. We have it here with a couple of neighbours from the planting. A tall Dianthus giganteus from the Balkans, which favours the same conditions and seeds about in the open places. It has proven to be long-lived here where the ground drains freely and has seeded easily but not annoyingly amongst but not into the crowns of neighbouring plants. Rising to almost a metre here, it is an easy companion, content to find its place on the edge of the planting and rising through the stipa to provide an undercurrent of colour. With blood red calyces and magenta buds that deepen the mood, the flowers open a soft rose-pink.
Close by, but very much in their own space, are the Baptisia x variicolor ‘Twilite Prairieblues’. Where many perennials are happy to be moved if you don’t find them the right position, you need to place the False Indigo in the right place the first time, because they like to put their feet down and hate disturbance thereafter. Being leguminous they fix their own nitrogen and are happy in the rubbly soil. As prairie-dwellers they hate to be overshadowed and will dwindle if a neighbour throws shade, but given a place they like with the surround of good light, they are long-lived and easy.
I have been experimenting with several of the hybrids for their longevity and their curious in-between colours and this one is a beauty. The female parent is the more usual indigo blue B. australis, but the male parent here is the yellow flowered B. sphaerocarpa and this provides the yellow keel. The colour of the standards is neither one thing nor another. A smoky violet-purple, without being muddied.
Rising fast and tall and again racing to the solstice, the lupin-like flowers strike a vertical accent whilst in flower. As they go to seed the plant becomes a rounded form that you need to allow room for as it fills out as it matures. The presence in summer is strong and definite, with good healthy glaucous foliage and, later, long-lasting seedpods that darken in winter to charcoal-black.
Though from the altogether different growing conditions of the cool damp meadows of southern China, the Iris chrysographes ‘Black Form’ refers here to the winter colours of those baptisia seedpods. Though iris could become a serious obsession, the reappearance of this one every June is always spellbinding. Black on first appearance, but the deepest royal purple on closer observation, they are worthy of a backdrop against which they will not be lost. In the garden they are allowed to hover in the paler suspension of Bowles’ Golden Grass, where their beautiful form is made all that much clearer. And here too, the stipa shows us that it is worth experimenting with associations you might not choose for their cultural compatability, but for what they might inspire beyond their place in the garden.
Words: Dan Pearson | Flowers and photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 19 June 2021
The Iris unguicularis arrive at precisely the moment it becomes apparent that winter is here to stay. Spearing clear of their strappy foliage whilst the world around them is in retreat, the tightly rolled buds provide untold good feeling. Their intermittence is welcome, the flowers appearing in the mild weeks and not in the cold ones from now until February snowdrops.
Although I have never seen the Algerian iris growing in the wild, I hanker to do so. To follow them one day on a journey through Greece, on into Turkey and all the way through to Tunisia. It would be good to see exactly where they grow in these rocky landscapes and why the best advice in this country is to plant them at the base of a south-facing wall with their backs against the reflected heat and their foliage basking in sunshine. This was exactly how my great friend Geraldine grew them, close to but not in the shade of a twisted fig and with nerines that shared their need for a baking. This was a treasured spot in her garden and I remember her justifying their neglect as she pulled me up a piece one autumn, conjuring, as she did so, their homelands and intolerance of cosseting. No food, no water and certainly no shadow. They prefer, she said, to be growing in rubble.
Although I have long since lost the original plant she gave me when I was a teenager, I can see them like yesterday on her kitchen table. Plucked in bud, to get the benefit of a long stalk and savoured expectation, they sat on their own in December and then, as the winter deepened, with witch hazel, pussy willow and wintersweet. The pale buds, with their picotee edging and tease of the sumptuous interiors, unroll in a matter of minutes once brought inside into the warmth. If you are lucky, you will witness the unfurling, but unless you make the time the transformation happens when you have your back turned.
Up close and inside in the warmth, their delicate perfume makes you wonder why they are happy to live with our wet and grey, scowling winters. In the wild, of course, where wet days are reliably followed by a week of bright sunshine, they are forage for bees when little else is blooming.
The plants I have here in Somerset came by way of a gift from the great nurseryman Olivier Filippi. I had been tasked by the National Trust to re-imagine the Delos garden at Sissinghurst and I had gone to see him in France to seek advice about the best plants for the job. The climate near Montpellier could not be more different from Kent, with low rainfall in the winter and months without it during a long summer. The garden alongside the nursery is remarkable and it was here that I came upon the Algerian iris providing their bright wintery flower under pines on the periphery of the garden. It was a surprise to see them out of my imagined context, not amongst rocks, but growing through pine needles so, where we augmented the soil at Sissinghurst with 50% grit, I have experimented with them in a range of conditions, including open shade.
My plants from Olivier are his own selections, a pale mauve-pink called ‘Bleu Clair’ and the much darker ‘Lucien’ which is the bud we plucked today. The old gold reverse gives the merest hint of the darkly rich flowers in the finely drawn edge to the reverse of the petals. More readily available here is a fine form called ‘Walter Butt’, which is truer to the species and the colour of a clear wintery sky. I have this plant at the London studio and plan to bring some here and find it a place nearby so I can enjoy them together.
Here, on our hearty loam, I have not been tempted to grow them in anything but full sunshine for fear of our West country wet being their downfall. They are planted in a free-draining position, with plenty of air and paired only with plants that do not smother their growth in summer because their rhizomes need the opportunity to store energy for winter flower. Erigeron karvinskianus and violets make good company. I have also not been tempted to do as the books advise and cut their evergreen leaves in the autumn to reveal the flowers clear of their foliage. Although it is often described as tatty, I like the flowers sitting pure and wild amongst it.
So, here they are on the gravel drive to lighten our daily movements on this well-trodden path. When darkness descends and it is still the afternoon, these small things count.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 12 December 2020
The dry spring has been good for the bearded iris, their growth starting early and rapidly converting the energy stored in their knuckly rhizomes. We have them growing against the warm walls here and in splendid isolation so that they can bask in the sunshine and out of our wind to spare them from tatters. Light caught in their flattened foliage, designed like sails to harvest every ray, you need to be there to watch from the moment they stir. The leaves are full of promise well before you spot the first flowering stems, sheathed still and backlit then suddenly visible, spearing free into the air. Racing to bud they are the epitome of expectation. Papery sheaths encase a tease of tightly wrapped colour, the growth slows as they ready. Then, one morning, the first miraculous flower and then daily more over the three weeks or so until their peak.
When we moved here I set up a trial of bearded iris on our south-facing slopes in order to get to know the plants that I thought would do well here and that I would like to get to know better. You need to have room to grow bearded iris or to commit to letting them bake once their flowering season is over. Until moving here I had gardened with them tentatively, giving over a small area of precious sunshine here or there, but always pining for the room to grow them freely and en masse, with one against the other.
In the spirit of research, I spent a glorious day in the iris fields of Woottens of Wenhaston with the late owner and iris collector Michael Loftus. I was looking for good form, nothing that felt too overbred and debilitated by ruffles, and I was hunting down good colour. Some deep and saturated, others less definable or with the complexity of veining and picotee. I kept an open mind within this remit with the aim of honing a palette and came away with an extensive list of 56 that spoke to me whilst I was there.
We observed the trial closely over the next five years, each season revisiting those that came to the surface as interesting and repeating the editing exercise to select the keepers. In the sixth year I made the final selection and so, after flowering and as the plants were going into their summer dormancy, I invited gardening friends to come and collect the divisions and liberated spares. It was a Saturday morning free-for-all, every bit as good as a jumble sale and uplifting for having whittled out the favourites and having sent the rejects to appreciative homes.
Twenty or so Benton iris, bred by the great plantsman Cedric Morris, which had very quickly come to the surface as right for the mood here, were planted against the hot, south-facing wall that backs the herb garden. His selections had a natural cohesion and I wanted to keep them together to see what he had seen, unadulterated. There were another dozen or so that we found impossible to part with. The hot flanks of the granite troughs became home to a handful of blues, a black and a thunderous purple, whilst the misfits went up to the barn wall where we grow those plants that don’t feel right in the garden, but make for good cutting; peonies, roses, sweet peas, dahlias and sunflowers.
The jarful you see here is a selection of the blues. Blue is not a colour that feels right in the main garden. Perhaps because the light is so bright all day on the open slopes. Blue is best in the gloaming or in shadow when it glows and hovers. It is lost, fugitive and hard to claim in bright light. Visited early in the morning or picked and brought inside where the dim brings out their luminosity, they come into their own.
‘Mme. Chereau’ is the first to bloom here and though the flower is small and delicate, it stands easily as tall as the majority at about 90cm. Bred in 1844, it was one of the most sought after iris of the 19th century. Described as ‘Hortense violet over creamy, ruffled falls’ in early iris manuals, it registers as pale from a distance. Though prized for the undulations in its standards and falls, the ruffling never overwhelms the flower which is small and perfectly proportioned. I love this iris and keep it close to the herb beds, where the green cushions of lavender are mingled this early in the season with denim blue flax. ‘Mme. Chereau’ is also delicately scented.
‘Nassak’ is planted close to ‘Mme. Chereau’ for its similar mood and colouring, and for the joy of the scale change. Bred in 1938 marbled sky-blue standards hover above white falls with exquisite blue stitching. The flowers are large and need the shelter the trough affords them from the Westerlies. Of all this bunch this is the most heavily scented. Zesty and opulent in equal measure and perfuming the whole of the boot room.
We kept ‘Tishomingo’ as it stood out for its simplicity. Bred in 1942 and described as a ‘Wisteria blue self’, it is blue throughout with the exception of a pale veined throat and golden beard. I liked it because I could see it in a silver and grey planting and quite simply didn’t want to overlook it for being so simply itself. An elegant plant with ease, poise and stamina when the wind blows. Pick it and you immediately notice its citrus perfume.
‘Benton Nigel’ was bred by Morris in 1956 or thereabouts and, of the Bentons we have here, makes an exception amongst its siblings for its saturated colour. Dark violet standards are underpinned by the richness of the inky purple falls, which glow more deeply for their paler, light catching margins, as if the petals were lit from beneath. This is an impeccable iris, well-behaved and clean in appearance.
‘Noctambule’ is the misfit amongst the misfits. A Cayeux iris bred in 2007 (the name means Night Owl in French), it feels decidedly different from the rest, with white satin standards and inky ruffled falls thrown out almost horizontally. At just over a metre in height it also has a stature that puts the others in the shade. Far too glamorous and exotic for this country hillside, I have been in two minds about keeping it since it first flowered here over 8 years ago. Somehow, however, it has always had a stay of execution. Various friends who have seen it have said, “You can’t let that one go, it’s incredible!”. My mother, who is staying with us during lockdown, was drawn to it too and we cut a stem for her bedroom. And so now its fate is sealed as a keeper and, as you can see, the contrast in the bunch is enlivening. The nearest to a black and white iris bred so far, squint in sunshine or see it at dusk and you get the impression, but the falls are really the richest, most velvety purple ands there’s no denying, it’s quite the distraction.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 16 May 2020
Finally, it seems, it is officially spring and we hope to move on from dodging the storms at last. Sailing through unscathed since they first showed colour in early January, the Cardamine quinquefolia is a plant that I would like much more of. It has taken a while to establish, but now it has the shade cover it likes, it is moving amongst the hellebores and the lavender-blue Iris lazica. An early woodland ephemeral, this cardamine has come and gone by the time the trees leaf up in May. It is a plant that takes all your attention for being so willing when most other things are dormant and it is good company for going into dormancy when they come to life. For this reason, it is worth making a note of where you need more of it and then moving it as soon as it breaks ground in January if you are not to miss the moment. It has fine surface roots like wood anemone, so I find it best to lift a square sod once the clumps are large enough to divide with a border spade.
This is the first year I have cut back the Epimedium sulphureum, shearing the foliage as soon as I saw flower buds in the crowns in mid-January. ‘Best practice’ dictates this is the most effective way to appreciate the coppery, new growth and emerging flowers, but leaving this easy epimedium for the past few winters has created a wonderful micro-climate whilst I’ve been establishing the hellebores. I have them pooled in its pillowy foliage so that their leaves are protected from the easterlies, but the flowers can rise above them.
Shearing last year’s growth in January felt bold, but the delicate flowers are now dancing in the breeze and quite capable of dealing with a storm. They are as delicate as fairies, despite being tough enough to deal with those difficult places between shrubs and beneath trees. It holds the slope behind the tool shed where there is shadow, but it is just as happy in open ground as long as it retains moisture. This would not be the case at all for its Asian relatives, but this reliable European epimedium is made for easy gardening.
Out of necessity I have been experimenting with planting woodlanders in sunshine on our exposed hillside. As long as they have the canopy of later-to-emerge perennials, the primroses actively seem to prefer spring sun. The same can be said of spring violets, which I am planting wherever there seems to be a suitable niche close to the paths. I first saw the unusual, soft apricot Viola odorata ‘Sulphurea’ a few years ago in the nuttery at Sissinghust, when I was visiting Troy Scott-Smith. He promised me a division but, as is the way, spring happened and the business surrounding it meant that it was autumn before Troy re-visited the spot to follow through on the offer. By then the violets seemed to have moved on so, smitten, I ordered seed from Chiltern Seeds and sowed it ahead of winter. Being another mild year and without the chill they need to germinate, they took two years to appear and then another one to flower, but now here they are. The wait seems suddenly nothing and I’m delighted to have them for myself. Though not as strongly perfumed as their purple cousins, I’ve also used them along path edges, combined with this creamy epimedium, so that not an inch of ground goes without cover.
I never fail to be delighted by Narcissus moschatus, which is possibly my favourite of all for its poise and delicacy. Closely related to our native N. pseudonarcissus, but only occurring naturally in the Pyrenees, it has taken a while to build up a nice colony, for the bulbs are hard to find. I have it growing under a five year old sweet chestnut that was planted in memory of my Dad. Opening a pale yet sharp buttercream yellow, they soon fade to ivory white. Heads tilted downward (they are also known as the swan-necked narcissus) the flowers have an air of modesty and melancholy.
Though some plants are good to revisit every year (and in the case of the narcissus, I am never disappointed) it is the first time that we have grown Iris ‘Katharine’s Gold’. It is always nice to discover a potential new favourite, and is one of the reasons we trial some new varieties of bulbs every year. This is the last of this year’s reticulate iris to appear, a good three to four weeks later than the first ones that came in late January. Reputedly a sport of I. ‘Katharine Hodgkin’, we prefer it as it is taller and stands more elegantly with more air between the standards and falls. Pale yellow suits this moment too. One we hope can now be depended upon to get brighter.
Words: Dan Pearson | Flowers & Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 7 March 2020
Every autumn, with late September sun on my back and the prospect of this very moment in mind, I spend an afternoon potting up the winter-flowering iris. A winter without them would be a winter without this particular prospect. A spear of optimism that pushes life regardless, into the dark months.
Here I save my hottest, driest spots for autumn-flowering Galanthus reginae-olgae, Amaryllis belladonna, Sternbergia lutea and the perennial, strappy-leaved Algerian Iris and so keep to the habit of growing the bulbous winter iris in pots. We are now spoiled for choice as there are so many named forms. The earliest to flower is Iris histriodes, which is distinct for having slightly shorter growth and wider flowers than Iris reticulata. There are also crosses between them and the yellow-flowered Iris winogradowii. Of them all I prefer the elegance of the Iris reticulata, which draw a more finely-penned line, but they are all worth exploring and every year we trial two or three new varieties and return to a favourite or two to reacquaint ourselves.
I have learned over the years that growing them in pots is the best way to grow them here. Hailing from Turkey, where they have a summer bake ahead of them, they make the most of the winter rains and the short and furious growing season. A winter which is all about readying for spring and where rest is not an option. They bring all of that energy with them and are more than happy to do their best in our benign climate in Britain, but our summer is their downfall. Like tulips, they need the bake and the dry come the summer and you have to find them a free-draining site which emulates their homeland if you are to be successful in keeping them long-term in open ground. The damp of the West Country, in combination with our heavy soil, means that I have the tiniest slivers of such ground at the base of south-facing walls that would see them doing well. This is not to say that it is not worth trying, but if you do have the right position, plant them deep at 15 to 20cm so that they are below the runs of mice and voles.
The bulbs are small and you need no more than five to a pot. Any more, or plant them too densely, and the elegance of the flowers is lost in the crowd. The bulbs are planted deep in the pot and put in the frame to keep them on the dry side and with just that little bit of extra protection to steal a week or perhaps a couple on the winter. The first spears of foliage were visible at new year this year. These early signs draw you back regularly to check on the shift which takes place rapidly as soon as you see the papery, translucent sheath that protects the flower buds. If you wait until this moment and bring them into a cool room in the house, the pointed buds will rise fast and silently in a day. If you are prepared to cheat again and bring them into slightly more warmth you can witness the petals unfurling like a Chinese fortune fish that curls in your hand.
Inside the flowers last for no more than a weekend, but you do get to witness them up close and intimately as I am doing now as they sit in front of me on my desk. Then you will also be able to take in their fine but certain perfume, like a cross between primroses and distant violets. This year, the tallest of the three that have come together this weekend is ‘Painted Lady’ (main image), the first to flower. Yellow, speckled buds open palest lavender, the blue leopard spots staining the tips of the petals as if they were bleeding. Next to flower was ‘Frozen Planet’, again pale but well-named for the ice-blue cast that intensifies to colour the whole of the falls. Last of the three is ‘Fabiola’, a substitute made by the nursery. Although my “no substitutes” rule is usually hard and fast, I am pleased to have this one. It is always good to have a dark form in the group, so as to have the gold flare in the throat set off by rich royal purple velvety falls.
We love them all, but I do not have the heart to keep them inside for long, since they last a fortnight outside in the shelter of the house and we return to them daily to enjoy their every moment.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 1 February 2020
It has been the most wonderful spring. Cool and nicely drawn out and kind to the irises for being dry during their magnificent three week flurry.
The garden is coming into its third summer in the greater part and its second in the remainder. Time enough for perennial planting to mesh and to have settled into serious growth as opposed to establishment. The roots are down and with it there has been a tidal surge that has been expressed most graphically in the Ferula communis. Fergus Garrett gave me two pots of seedlings four years ago. The straight F. communis and its more slender variant, F. communis ssp. glauca. They were potted on into long-toms to encourage a good deep root and kept in the frame for a winter before being planted out as yearlings.
Two growing seasons putting their roots down saw their filigree mound of foliage ballooning over the winter. They are usefully winter-green, providing a counterpoint to most of the world being in dormancy and, being on the front foot, by spring they were the trigger that let us know that the sap was rising. You could feel the energy mustering at ground level. A clenched fist at first when you parted the foliage to see what was coming, but soon a racing limb which soared skyward before branching and flowering against blue like an acid yellow firework. They have been quite the proclamation. One of optimism and joy and a garden that is finally coming together.
Ferula communis ssp. glauca
In the perennial garden where the outer planting is now coming into its third growing season, I can see how things are playing out. The giants in the mix, in this case Sanguisorba ‘Cangshan Cranberry’ and Thalictrum ‘Elin’, have already muscled out anything that does not have the stamina for competition. I moved the asters that were showing me they didn’t like it out to the edges and replaced the gaps with shade-loving Cimicifuga rubifolia ‘Blickfang’, which were sent from Hessenhof Nursery in Holland. I like responding when a planting tells you it needs change and the thought of using the tall growing plants in our exposed, brightly lit site to shelter those that naturally prefer the cool ground. We could probably not have got away with this in the first year without the cover to prevent the cimicifuga from burning.
The iris here in the perennial garden are selected for their spearing foliage and refined form of flower. Iris fulva, the copper iris, is shown to best effect amongst bright Zizia aurea, and Iris orientalis from Turkey towering architecturally above their companions whilst the planting around them is still low. Early spears are one of the aspects I enjoy most in the early garden and Iris sibirica ‘Papillon’ have been as strong and definite as you could ever wish a plant to be. In colour they have taken over neatly from the camassia,which were introduced this year. I like to wait a year or so before introducing bulbs so that I know where change might occur and can be sure they have the space to establish unhindered. I’ve learned though that camassia that are prone to seeding do not make good bedfellows in open ground, for they are profligate. Camassia leitchlinii ssp. suksdorfii ‘Electra’ is reputedly sterile and finishes just as the iris come into flower. Self-seeders have proven to be problematic on our rich ground so, when I am in doubt, I deadhead and leave a sample to see how seeding plays out.
This is exactly how I will manage the Allium atropurpureum, which are now worked into the planting in the middle of the garden. We planted fifty bulbs last autumn in the gaps between the Digitalis ferruginea. They have been wonderful for enlivening this area early in the season with the promise of leaf and bud and now height amongst the acid green euphorbia.
With summer firmly here but fresh still in its infancy, it is the moment of the euphorbias and they are mounding luminously throughout the planting. Standing back and looking down on the garden from The Tump, they remind me of my first sighting of the giant fennels in the Golan Heights when I was studying at the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens in the mid-eighties. It was forbidden territory, the minefields floriferous for being completely inaccessible. As far as you could see there was a march of giant fennel with euphorbia and searing red anemone at their feet. Perhaps this memory was etched into my mind when I planned for spring and early summer here, for I find myself looking on and seeing the similarities. Euphorbia cornigera with its dark red stems high up in the garden, E. wallichiii with its weight and volume to the lower slopes where the ground lies damper and in the high, dry centre the Euphorbia x ceratocarpa nestle the black alliums. Scarlet Papaver ‘Beauty of Livermere’ dot and brighten.
As I look out of the window to the first proper rain we have had in quite some time, I can see the plants exhaling. The greens are brighter – if that were possible – the garden plumper already and readying to push again. There is promise and it is amplified.
Iris orientalis
Iris fulva and Zizia aurea
Iris sibirica ‘Papillon’
Papaver orientalis ‘Beauty of Livermere’ and Salvia ‘Jezebel’
Allium atropurpureum with Euphorbia x ceratocarpa
This first week in the month has brought with it change. The tip in the season is mapped in the scoring of luminous hazel catkins, their streamers hatching verticals into the backdrop of dark wood and hedgerow. These catkins are one of my favourite moments, catching the push of the cold easterlies and the sun when it breaks through the grey. And at their feet, pushing up leaf mould, the snowdrops have made their claim on the shortest month.
Despite the evidence that the grip of winter is loosening, I am always happy to have planned for more. Be it a small effort in the fullness of the previous autumn, a few pots of Iris reticulata are an essential. Just a handful of bulbs is all that is needed to bridge the need for new life and the trickle of spring which, by the time the iris are over, will be sure to be moving and constant.
Hailing from the Middle East, where they bask in winter sunshine when they are in leaf and bake whilst dormant in summer, they are difficult to keep here in the damp of Britain. That said, the bulbs are cheap and easy if you are open to the fact that they are fugitive, so the act of throwing the bulbs after they are over is less guilt-inducing. Plant them deep, to the depth of a trowel in free draining ground and you may have success, but on our hearty soil here they make nothing but leaf in the second year. I prefer the surety of an annual order and the promise they bring to the kitchen table.
Iris histrioides ‘George’
I’ve learned over the years that, if you are growing them for display, less is definitely more and that three to five bulbs is enough in a six inch pot. Plant any more and the flowers collide and become confused. The greater part of their charm is in their exquisite outline, slim as pencils when in bud and then pure and finely drawn in their asymmetry once in flower.
Potted in a free-draining compost and kept in a protected place such as the closeness of a house wall or a frame, they need little attention in the first half of winter. Come January, you will see that the spears of foliage have already broken the compost and, towards the end of the month, the tissue-paper sheath reveals the presence of buds held tightly in the base of the leaves. When you see the colour of the buds through the sheath, it is time to bring them in to a cool room to force the flowers and steal a march on the season.
In the warmth, the bud pushes free of its papery protection and rises a little, like a champagne flute on a pale, fine stem so that you can see the full outline. This happens fast when they are ready, over a day or two days at most and, if you are patient, you might witness the flowers open. One fall first, the next and then the third, jerking quietly out and then down to reveal the inner markings. These are exquisite, and variable in the many named varieties, some spotted and flecked, others pure colour broken only by a flame in the throat and the pollen of stamens. Inside, in the still and warmth of a room, you will also catch their delicate perfume. As welcome and as soft as that of primroses and easily lost outside in the blow of an easterly.
Iris histrioides ‘Finola’
Every year we experiment with a new variety or two, buying ten bulbs of each and three or four varieties at most. We have found our favourites over the years. The slim, dark elegance of ‘J S Dijt’ is one that I would grow every year, and I generally prefer the rich plums of ‘George’ and ‘Pauline’ to the royal and denim blues of ‘Edward’, ‘Gordon’ and ‘Cantab’. However, we loved ‘Blue Note’ last year, with its narrow petals of deepest midnight and ‘Harmony’ (main image) is the quintessential blue spring iris of Japanese woodcuts.
I also have an enduring fondness for the curiosity of ‘Katherine Hodgkin’ with her washed-out, pale blue flowers with greenish veining and yellow leopard spots. Though we do not have it this year, the ghostly mother-of-pearl whiteness of ‘Finola’ is a recent find that I would like to revisit. It is always worth growing something new as there are many to choose from and a wealth of potential future favourites if you see each year as an opportunity for discovery. I already have the clear, sherbet-yellow ‘Katherine’s Gold’ and palest blue ‘Polar Ice’ picked out for next year.
Iris reticulata ‘Harmony’
As you perfect the art of knowing when to bring them in, you can relay your pots for succession. Though the flowers last just a few days inside, if you have a half dozen pots and keep half in a shadier spot than the others, you will have flower for a fortnight to three weeks. Time enough to bridge the seasons.
Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 3 February 2018
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