Plant of the Week
Crested Iris
Latin: Iris cristata
This morning as I sat on my deck - cup of coffee in hand - surveying my
fading crop of azalea blooms, I was struck by the elusive nature of gardens.
Here today, gone tomorrow.
This fleeting nature is borne out in an assignment in one of my classes where
students are required to write a paper on some person important in horticultural
history. Most of the students, because references are required, choose some
famous garden designer. Almost invariably they state somewhere in their report
something like "of the 300 gardens designed, only a single example remains of
their work."
Not only are the flowers of little plants like the crested iris fleeting, but
so is the very garden in which we plant them.
The crested iris is one of the woodland wildflowers of the eastern deciduous
forest where it is found as far to the northeast as Maryland and as far south as
Georgia and west to the edge of the prairie.
It typically grows on sloping ground facing east or north, often in fairly
deep shade. It has slender, surface dwelling rhizomes that swell near the fan of
leaves which are shaped like a knife blade and grow about 6 inches long. The
light blue flowers are held above the foliage with a typical iris-like bloom,
but in miniature. The blooms are produced in April with the bloom display
lasting for about two weeks.
The type of garden we choose to build affects the temporal nature of the
display we create. Formal plantings, such as the parterre displays of the French
or the patchwork displays of the Victorian era, pass from garden to weed patch
in a single season without the hand of the caring gardener.
Perhaps the Japanese garden, with its strong reliance on stone and sparse
plantings, is the most lasting style of design without continual intervention,
but even it will loose form and definition without the touch of the gardener.
Some might contend that a garden of native plants will have permanence, but
natives too are quickly lost without the gardener keeping the relentless creep
of nature at bay. I developed a rock garden a few years ago with a heavy
reliance on native plants. But within a year of moving on, the garden changed
from what I considered a beautiful planting to a barren pile of rocks when the
new owners failed to take an active interest in the garden.
Gardeners, it seems to me, pursue their passion from some inner need, yet
fully aware that their toil will have a transitory nature. Perhaps this is as it
should be. We’re born, we garden because we have to, and then we die.
The British, where gardening is a national passion, have developed the
National Trust which preserves and maintains gardens in perpetuity. Even there,
it is the large estates that are preserved, not the small gardens of countless
ordinary folk.
Fleeting though its flower display may be, the crested iris is still a worthy
garden plant. It’s foliage makes it a beautiful groundcover in the shade garden.
It does especially well at the base of large trees where it will colonize an
area within a few years. Give it a well drained site rich in organic matter, and
it should prosper for years. Division can be done at almost any time, but late
summer or early fall is probably preferable.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
May 11, 2001
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