Iris Gallery
Alas, I do not know the specific cultivars of any of the irises on this page.
To me the various varieties & species all look so similar,
I have no capacity to name them. If you recognize one or another
of these with any certainty, e-mail me & I'll add their
names to this page.
The first one, a standard purple variety, was given to us as a
division from a friend's garden. It's growing next to a picket fence
where it gets a great deal of afternoon sun & the benefit
of regular watering of the more water-needy perennials in that location.
It blooms late May & June.
The same woman who gave us divisions of the purple iris immediately
above also gave us this very tall splendid white one,
which is my favorite for the blossom. It begins blooming
right from the first day of June. Our friend said of it,
"This is from my grandmother's garden in Montana."
It's been shared with an awful lot of people over time.
It's growing by the same fence with the shorter purple one above.
Though nearly pure white, it does have a hint of yellow
toward the center of the petals.
This third one was also a gift from our friend's dividing hers.
It is growing in a low-maintence location along the alley
up against the garage. It blooms in mid May & lasts until June.
One day in May when a child was walking through the alley
with his mother, I heard him excitedly exclaiming,
"Mom look at that garden! Do you see the garage?"
After they'd passed by, I went out in the alley to see
what precisely had gotten him so excited, but almost nothing
had yet burst into flower, it was predominantly just greenery
& budded vines, the majority of the plants being
summer bloomers still a week to three weeks away from blooming.
Only this pale purple iris was in full flower. It hardly made for
an exciting garden all by itself, but it was so charming &
heartwarming that a kid could get so worked up over it.
This row of tall deep blue irises grows along a neighbor's fence
on the opposite side of our alley, having been planted by the neighbor
just below our property line. I generally only document our own garden
in the Paghat Pages, but as this blue iris comes right up to the
property line & they're so lovely, I kind of half felt like
they extended our own gardens.
I asked our neighbor if he knew what variety they were,
but he didn't have a clue, they'd just gotten divided & re-divided
over the years until there were a great many of them.
These bloomed throughout May, being finished before June began.