Zac Posen Gives Us a Shout-Out At Vogue.com

        For Mother’s Day this year, Vogue.com asked twenty top fashion designers and models – from Vera Wang to Gisele Bundchen – to talk about “the gifts they intend to give or hope to receive.” Our favorite reply came from Zac Posen, the wildly popular Tribeca designer whose “strong, feminine aesthetic has become a favorite of style leaders” such as Kate Winslett, Jennifer Lopez, and Beyonce, and whose off-the-rack collections are currently selling at Target and Saks.
        “I plan to give my mother ‘Madame Chereau’ heirloom iris from Old House Gardens,” Zac wrote. “They are the most sought-after iris of the nineteenth century and have a history of staying alive. I remember when I was younger we had a field of iris, which was beautiful! I want to fill a field with irises for my mother one day.”
        Thanks, Zac! We hope your mom loves them! (June 2010)

‘Flavescens’ Transcendent: Poster Child for Heirloom Flowers

        Here’s a photo that will gladden the hearts of heirloom flower lovers everywhere. Left to fend for itself in the weeds alongside a dirt road not far from Kansas City, pale yellow ‘Flavescens’ iris has multiplied without care into an endless swath of pale, shimmering yellow. (March 2010)

Saving Local Heirlooms at the Pickle Barrel Iris Garden

        Some of the most exciting heirloom flowers aren’t found in catalogs or gardens. They’re just out there, in the wild, the last reminders of houses and gardeners that are long gone. In a small town on the shores of Lake Superior, our friend Nancy McDonald decided to collect some of these relics and display them in a living museum of local garden history. Her charming, photo-filled account of the Pickle Barrel House Historic Iris Garden – home now to “Linnamaki Purple,” “Baker Grade” (from the site of a railroad switchman’s cabin), and other “noids” – is an inspiring story that may get you saying, “I could do that!” (March 2010)

Divide Iris and Defeat Borers: Now is the Time!

        If your iris plantings have become over-crowded, or you want to share some with friends, now is the time to dig and divide them. “It’s easy, and fun,” our friend Ken Druse wrote recently at RealDirtRadio.com. “I dig up my iris rhizomes with a garden fork when they are dormant – now. Most of the soil will fall off the thick rhizome and reveal slender roots. I trim back the leaves into ‘fans’ and cut off the oldest section of rhizome (which will not bloom again). I dip the rhizome (holding it by the leaves) in a 10% solution of household chlorine bleach for about ten seconds. I set them out to drain on some newspaper, and then replant with the top of the rhizome just at the surface of the soil. Sun-baked rhizomes bloom best.”
        “Older varieties of bearded iris do not need dividing as often as newer ones,” Ken adds. To see the six heirlooms we’re offering, click here. To learn more about dividing iris and combating borers, listen to Ken’s July 3 podcast. (July 2009)

Your Feedback, Please: How Are Our Iris Doing?

        We shipped bearded iris for the first time this spring, and we’re eager to hear how they’re growing. Have they settled into your garden happily, and did you get blooms this first summer? Our trial-runs were successful, but we want to make sure we’re delivering iris in a way that works for all of our customers.
        Though most sources ship them in mid-summer, a separate, iris-only shipping season would mean our customers would have to order a full $30 worth (our minimum order) instead of just one or two. With spring delivery, on the other hand, most gardeners will get bigger plants faster along with blooms in a couple of months rather than a year. The way we see it, that’s a better way to serve our customers and to help preserve heirloom iris. (June 2009)

Got Iris? We’re Buying!

        We’ve doubled the number of iris in our new catalog, and we’d like to offer many more in the future. Maybe you can help.
        If you have a big clump of a wonderful old iris, and you might be interested in selling 50-200 rhizomes of it to us, please email charlie@oldhousegardens.com. You don’t have to know its name (we have experts to help us with that), but we will need clear, close-up photos of (a) an individual flower, including the beard, (b) a stalk, so we can see how it branches, and (c) the base of the leaves where they meet the rhizome (the coloring there is often helpful in identification). We hope to hear from you! (May 2009)

If Javelinas Roam Your Garden, Plant Iris!

        Though we didn't include bearded iris on our recent list of animal-resistant bulbs, our good customer Louise Coulter of Payson, Arizona, emailed us to vouch for them:
        “In my area which is at 5,000 feet in Arizona’s northern section there is an animal called javelina or wild pig. With cloven hoofs, tusks, and large foraging families, it devastates unprotected bulbs in gardens – except for iris. Seems they can’t eat iris. So at thousands of homes here, where the yards are unfenced, iris naturalize and are ubiquitous. Seems the local nurseries obtained a limited color palette of them each year, so one can almost tell how old the bulbs are by their color. For years one could only get shades of variegated purple and a lovely pale salmon.” (Nov. 2008)

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