Iris have been on the gardening scene for over 200 years and yet their beauty continues to resonate. New cultivars with showy colors and fragrance are still being bred in 2025!
Just underneath the espaliered pears of Olguita’s Garden we have an impressive and lovely collection of bearded Iris. These Iris were installed as original plantings when Olguita’s Garden was built in 2018. The plants have performed exceedingly well, to the point that by the summer of 2024, the beds were literally stuffed with Iris foliage.
We began to see some foliar spotting and some rot issues, and significantly less blooms than in previous years due to the plants being too congested.
The blooms from spring were already finished up, so we decided to divide our Iris clumps. Summer is the best time for this work. We dug up the clumps of Iris and reduced the finger-like energy stores from which the growth and blooms arise (known as rhizomes) from around 50 densely interwoven rhizomes to 3-5.
We sorted through the rhizomes, composting ones with rotten portions, potting up little ones to grow on to larger sizes, and reset the best and bulkiest rhizomes back in the beds the same day.
Iris don’t like to be too deep (it can cause them to rot), so it’s important that the top of the rhizome is visible right at soil’s surface.
The 2025 spring show of Iris blooms was back on track, and the husky divisions we reset last summer have multiplied rapidly. Since the air flow is better, we have had less pests and diseases, less rot and better blooms.
Dividing Iris can be laborious, but the health of the plants is much improved AND you gain extras to share with friends and family!