Irises! The un-old lady flower.

Purple Streaker- From Hopefoote on Flickr

This may be a little early but it needs to be known! For years I have poo-pooed on the Iris name. When Irises make their debut this year, hopefully more people will be waiting to enjoy their beauty!

My name for Irises once was, “The Old Lady Flower.” Irises were one of those transient flowers that old ladies in gardens fussed over, but really, did not appeal to me. And of course, as always, when I make uninformed generalizations, I am schooled…. this time by the old lady.

Not in any subtle way, either. Not in the, “Oh, maybe I just didn’t really understand, it’s not that bad.” But more like, “What kind of rock have I been under? I’ve been ridiculous! Why don’t I learn to shut my mouth?!”

Irises are amazing. AMAZING. And it took a trip last year to the Presby Memorial Iris Garden in Montclair, New Jersey to figure that out. It is a humbly designed garden with rows and rows of beds packed with 3,000 varieties of the world’s Irises. Really unbelievable.

Even more unbelievable was that I had forgotten my camera. Imagine my joy when I stumbled upon Hopefoote, Ambassador of Wow’s Photostream on Flickr that documented several year’s growth of this very same garden. YES! You can check out Hopefoote’s entire stream here. It is all about the irises.

For info on growing Iris (which I will immediately do so that soon I will be the old lady fussing over irises). There’s some good info at the Schreiner’s Iris Garden Site. Very good stuff. If I had just jumped into it, from the looks of this site, I would be making several mistakes.

Enjoy Hopefoote’s and others’ work. I went a little nuts.