The Infatuating Iris

Does every gardener fall in love with irises at some point? I suspect so. It's ably the plant's huge range of colors that casts the initial spell. No flower can match the spectrum offered by the tall bearded iris -- vivid blues and pinks; luminous whites and velvety blacks; blends of apricot, tangerine, brown, and gold. Some petals are made even richer with contrasting rims of white or yellow. Within each color, shades and tones are diverse. Yellow can be strong sulfur or pale straw, sharp lemon or ivory primrose. Visit bearded-iris gardens in late May and early June, and you'll feel as though you 're in a paint store.

Once smitten with the bearded iris, gardeners discover other kinds of iris that also claim their hearts. Iris species are easy to recognize by their characteristic six-petal, flowers, with three petals, called standards, pointing up or out and three petals, or falls, pointing out or down. They are so distinctive that iris depictions can be identified in ancient Minoan and Egyptian art. The fleur-de-lis, an abstracted silhouette of an iris, was the symbol of France from the Middle Ages until the French Revolution.

While individual irises bloom for just a short time, the iris season lasts for months, beginning in April with the shortest irises and concluding in early July with the tallest. The 3-inch-tall native Iris cristata carpets the walk to my front door with blue every spring; by June, 4-foot-high drifts of purple Siberian iris make the red poppies and peonies in my flower beds pop like sparkling splashes of pigment in an Impressionist painting.

No flower I grow offers so much beauty for so little effort as the graceful Siberian iris variety Caesar's Brother. It has endured and multiplied in my yard for decades without any care while other fussier plants have come and gone.

The easygoing Siberians (Iris sibirica) only came in shades of blue, pink, and white until Dr. Osceola Currier McEwen bred Butter and Sugar, a variety that added creamy yellow flowers to this sturdy species. I first saw this lovely plant, which I now grow, almost 20 years ago while touring McEwen's garden in Maine. He was then in his 80s and full of goals for his breeding program. I never met a happier octogenarian. He died a year ago, having reached 100 still growing irises. I have also fallen for the Japanese iris (Iris ensata), but that love is somewhat unrequited. The flat-faced flower looks like an intricately fretted parasol on its tall stem and comes in colors ranging from white to dark mulberry. This iris is easily grown from seed or from a cultivar with a long impressive Japanese name. But if you don't have a sunny stream bank or bog for it, irrigating can be a chore. You can try growing it in pots or tubs without drainage holes, as they often do in Japan. There, when the flowers are enjoying their brief July bloom, the pots are moved into shallow fish ponds for the visual double dip of watching colorful koi swim among these opulent flowers. After blooming, the plant needs considerably less water and are removed from the ponds.

The first iris to bloom in my yard is the minor bulb Iris reticulata, which sprouts tiny purple flowers as early as March; they smell like violets when the sun shines warm upon them. They require no care, a quality I admire in a plant. So I have also come to favor the little-grown plum tart iris (Iris graminea), which has small rose-purple and violet-blue flowers with the delicious fragrance of plums or apricots. The catch is that the plant just looks like floppy grass in the garden, because the flowers are shorter than the foliage. To enjoy them visually and aromatically, they must be plucked and set in a vase. So I grow plum tarts near the garage right outside my kitchen door. Here they survive neglect most endearingly, and I can cut the flowers while the morning coffee is brewing.

The Louisiana iris is native to Southern swamps, but Gamecock is a remarkable hybrid that I ordered as a lark, only to find that it grows in my northern garden with no special care, producing tall purple-black flowers with the iridescence of rooster feathers.

Gardening teaches us to keep trying new things, to forget the failures, and to enjoy the successes. I will certainly never run out of new kinds of irises to try. This year, I'm anticipating the first blooms from a late-summer planting of pest-resistant dwarf bearded iris. After the initial delight of growing something novel will come the true test of time. If they thrive, they will join the ranks of other irises that appear reliably year after year without a lot of fuss, like welcome old friends who come by for an annual visit.

Part Heaven, Part Earth

Irisis are named for the Greek goddess Iris, who walked between heaven and earth on a bridge made from a rainbow. Wherever she trod among the mortals, colorful flowers sprang up in her footprints. If you want to travel in the goddess's footsteps and visit great iris gardens, join the Iris Society of Massachusetts. Stephanie Markham, whose wonderful garden in Norfolk is frequently open to members, is a thirdgeneration iris lover and a second-generation breeder. Her mother, Lynn Markham, is a fellow society member who breeds border and tall bearded iris in Lunenburg. "My mom has dragged me to meetings since I was a little girl," says Stephanie.

Stephanie Markham's 3-acre Toadland Gardens is a paradise in early June, when seven beds of mainly bearded iris are at their peak. It is also home to nesting bluebirds, tree swallows, and a bright yellow goldfinch that, to Markham's dismay, likes to perch on iris stems and peck at the buds.

Ada and Bill Godfrey's Hermit Medlars Walk on Route 140 in Foxborough (www.hmwalk.com) is a small but glorious iris nursery with a specialization in the underappreciated dwarf bearded iris that begins to bloom in April and May. (For a catalog, send $1 to Bill Godfrey, 3 Pierce Street, Foxborough, MA, 02035.)

The bearded iris gets its odd name from the hairy, caterpillarlike feature creeping out of the center of each flower. Hobbyists are always creating new varieties, thousands of which have been registered with the American Iris Society.

Most irises should be shallowly planted in full sun. Bearded iris have rhizomes -- storage roots like sweet potatoes -- that should be planted horizontally and barely covered with soil on top. Don't mulch them; the rhizomes like to bake in the sun. To keep these plants blooming well, the rhizomes should be dug up and divided every three to four years.

Bearded irises are less popular in New England because of a pest called the iris borer, which has caused many local gardeners to switch to pest-resistant Siberian irises. However, Markham and the Godfreys, who all garden organically, say they have minimal problems with the pest because they practice clean cultivation. "There's no mulch and no weeds," Markham says. "I cut down everything in October to a few inches. I do compost the iris leaves, but the compost doesn't go back on the irises."

When Markham sees the wet, chewed leaf edges that signal iris borers, she squeezes her thumb and forefinger down the leaf, squishing the larvae hidden within. "You never see them outside the leaf," she says. "They're tunnelers." Sometimes she finds darkred 1-inch pupae when she's cultivating around the plants and destroys them. "When you garden organically, you have to do hand-to-hand combat."

Colors, Sizes, and Shapes

Irises, named after the Greek goddess of the rainbow, come in almost every color. The Siberian irises shown to the right were photographed at Tranquil Lake Nursery in Rehoboth, which specializes in Siberian and Japanese irises. The three bearded irises were grown by Stephanie Markham of Norfolk, who hybridized the peach-colored miniature tall bearded iris, yet unnamed. The pseudacorus, or yellow flag wild iris, is an invasive plant and should be confined to small backyard garden ponds.

Show and Sale

The Western New England Iris Society will sponsor a show of several hundred blooming plants May 30 at the Buckland-Shelburne Community Center in Shelburne Falls from 1 to 4 p.m. The Iris Society of Massachusetts will hold a plant sale July 24 at the University of Massachusetts Extension Center, also called the Waltham Field Station, 240 Beaver Street, Waltham, beginning at 9 a.m. For information, call 978-369-3383.

Membership in the society, which runs garden tours, lectures, and plant sales, is $5, payable to membership chairman Barbara Heim, 346 Ayer Road, Harvard, MA 01451.

Carol Stocker is a member of the Globe staff. She can be reached at c_stocker@globe.com.