Work Started Today on the new iris bed.

I don't have any bearded iris. But I do have lots on order shipping in July. Meantime I learned that the reason I was so unsucessful growing bearded iris was that I mulched them to death. Learned now that you don't cover the rhizome.


So I decided (before I ordered) that what I needed was a new iris garden bed were I can have them by themselves.

The new iris bed is on the north side of my house and is a 7 foot square slightly raised on one side and much more raised on the other to make the ground level. Then there is going to be a smaller square in the middle raised about two high. Its situated between the driveway and the house kinda stuck into the middle of the lawn. Making it out of those 4 inch wide landscape timbers.

Right now the bigger 7 foot square box is mostly done. Then it has to be filled with soil so that the second level can be put in. Work continues tomorrow and I will post pictures when we are done showing progress along the way.

Landscape timbers are good, keep the soil level higher that the timbers, and let the soil settle before you plant, the soil level will drop and you may have to add more dirt. Water very well to help settle the dirt. You do not want water to get trapped, I took all of the boards off my raise beds Friday and tilled mounds instead, too much water being trapped, but my boards were 8X6X2 and 5X5X2 for supports, they were much larger.

Good Luck

Drainage is pretty good here and I figgure with the raised bed it will be even better. I figgure it might get done today if it does not start raining. I have plenty of time for the soil to settle as my iris only ship in July. But I figgure once the bed is done I can start to figgure spacing.

Its done. Turned out GREAT!!!!! I am so pleased. Now to let the soil settle and in the meanime I can try and figgure out spacing. I took lots of pictures and will post them as soon as I get a chance.

Here are pictures--

This looks like a good location.

Looking from the front of the yard, it still looks like a good spot.

First level walls done.

I wanted a 3 foot square inside the 7 foot square to make it a double tier bed.Needs more soil to fill it.

Done!!!

And heres the view from the top of the backyard. This should turn out fantastic.

I have plenty of time to think about it as iris only coming in July but first go round of putting in sticks to space out distances to plant iris gives me 36 iris in the outside bed, not counting the smaller middle square.


I started by putting a marker every sixteen inches all the way around the square near the outside edge. That gives me a run of six going along each edge but since saying six counts the courners twice, it really is 20 markers if I just count them indivually. Then 3 along each square second row and four more in the corners were there is extra space. Comes to 36.

Sounds great. I could learn a lot from the rational way you build your beds. I tend to stick in an iris here, a day lily there. I like your organized way of doing things. I bet the results will be gorgeous. Do keep sending us pictures as the iris are planted and grow and eventually bloom.

I have no more room available that I could just stick something here and there. Years ago I used to use that approach and it never worked out really well for me as I did not like the combos that ended up.

As for the iris, I had to do a new bed because I needed them not to be were I heavily much things. I knew if I didn't put them in a bed by themselves, I would mess it up.