Please show me your small yard iris gardens! =)

Howdy doo everyone. I've looked at so many wonderful photos of gardens trying to decide on the design for my new iris beds. The rhizomes are all potted up and acclimating well, but I really need to settle on a design and get to working the dirt! It seems like all the photos I see are of large yards with gorgeous meandering beds... or they're out in the country somewhere. Ahhh, that would be so great! But, here I sit on a typical middle class suburban lot. Soooo, I'm hoping all of you avid iris gardeners can help me out. If you have a smaller size yard, but not necessarily a smaller number of irises, can you please post a photo or two for inspiration?

Thanks so much for your help!!!

Wish I had a plan other than "oooh, that's a pretty one...take my money...uh oh, where am I going to plant it?" lol I overwintered some in containers where they bloomed this past spring (most did some just increased). I removed all of my old NOIDs in the front bed and started with new named iris that I planted in December after a couple of months of procrastinating:)

Here is one of the front bed (1/2 is TB iris) very early in spring before things got going.
Some weedy clover, new TB iris, lilies and a NOID hosta. I managed to cram about 25 iris in that side of the bed which measures 8 ft long by 2 1/2 ft wide.

This message was edited Aug 19, 2008 12:37 PM

Here are some of the potted ones in early spring 2008. They were planted in late winter (mild last year) and overwintered in the containers.

This was my favorite iris in the front bed this spring--Earthborn. I had wanted it for years and it was what prompted my whole iris order from Wild Iris Rows late last summer. I didn't get any of them in the ground until mid December and many of them still bloomed:lol:

And a couple of pictures from the potted iris on the patio...

Ascent of Angels was gorgeous!

And a couple more...which will most likely be better off in the ground this fall:lol:

Enchantment--taken in May 08.

I don't think I stepped back much and took a "whole bed or half bed" photo in the front so this I think is the best I might have. Will have to try that next season for a better view.

This is Stunning (tall pink and rose), Designer Gown (pink), yellow bud is Harvest of Memories and shorter ones are Earthborn.


This message was edited Aug 19, 2008 1:18 PM

Hello! I love this little area with my "Babbling Brook" TB iris and this is its second year in this location. Although my iris have now finished blooming this year, the foliage from the iris fill in nicely now among the daylilies, penstemmon, peony, and a few choice other plants. I have several areas now planted with this iris and have added more selections this year. The dark object in the background of the iris is a improvised shade for a small pond until my water lily fills in and covers the water surface. Love your choices and will keep in mind for my future design choices!

Thanks for the posts and pics, everyone. =)
Keep 'em coming!

What do most of you use to border your beds...? I've seen lots of rows like veggie gardens on the pro sites, but if you're going with a raised bed at home, how do y'all border? I see rocks in the pic above, and like the look... maybe with river rock rather than boulders here in the South.

Ideas? Pics? Thanks for the help!!! =)

Koiwings-you're garden is beautiful! I love using rocks in a garden and the pond is great--I'm sure you do need to keep it shaded in NM:lol: Former Alamogordo NM girl here:)

Since I'm apt. gardening I sort of have to stick to the retangular bed thing so I just got plastic edging the tallest I could find so I could raise the soil level a bit since there is quite a bit of clay here. I like the naturals border materials better than anthing else. Like using young sapling cuttings to bend and make fences or fallen logs for straight borders. I can barely put a stake out in the garden now without one of the neighborhood kids taking it:lol:

This is the side of the building adjacent to the front bed where I want to make a raised bed for more iris or other stuff.

This bed was incomplete when the photo was taken, but it's the best I could find showing the stones used to make the bed. I normally don't care much for pre-formed stones... but these served the purpose very nicely. I bought them at Lowes. They are fairly inexpensive, easy to lay, and can be arranged to make different shaped beds. The natural stones you see laying on the porch were used to form a dry bed on both sides of the stone border near the lower right of the photo.

You may want to check out the "Garden Design Forum". Here's a link.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/landscaping/all/

Have fun, Dan

Thanks for the responses, everyone... and for the link, Dan! I've been a DG member for a while, but I've mainly utilized it to research plants as I landscape the yard here. We moved to this home with the smaller yard about 2 years ago. I had difficulty finding my favorite plants from our previous yards, so I came online to search for them and ended up here. I've just begun venturing into the forums... I didn't even realize there was a forum on garden design until you posted the link! Hopefully they have a few pics of designs that will work well for beardeds in our humid Southern environment. =)

If anyone else has a photo of iris in action, post away! Thank you!!!

Here's one! I think it's TB iris Jesse's Song

Mine is not all irises but I think my yard kinda fits your criteria. I live in a small town. No huge yard here and what yard there is has to be shared with my son's garden tractor collection. These pics will show approx 100 irises mixed with other perennials.
the first is kinda from back of yard looking front

this is more from my back porch again looking front

this is the front view

and the last is looking at the fence row across yard. LOL, I wasn't kidding about the tractors.

Thank you, Willit! That plan would work well in my yard... perimeter planting around the fenceline mixed with a few other things that bloom at different times. BTW, love the tractors! ;-) I'm wondering, though, what to use to border the beds. I'll have to go a lot higher with them here in Louisiana. Ideas?

Thanks everybody!

Thanks Dan--those would definitely be better for what I'm needing--I forgot all about those manmade edgers:lol:

Mittsy and Willit--really nice garden photos:)

great now i need earthborn here is bed at my moms , it started with 4 rizomes . she has never added any ever . she started many patches out of here lol. this yeat she added about 20 new colors and took out about 200 well i did to start a new big patch at my house . this year the light yellow bloomed first usually they all bloom at the same time .you can see all the old blooms .

Very pretty iris28. Nice colors. Nice big bed.
Laura

we got bored wit the same ole thing so she added stairway to heaven , high waters , panic button , green and gifted, ozone alert , champagne elegance, honk your horn , ferrous fantacy, song of norway, zip it up , and im forgetting some. not meaning to hijack but does any one have any opinion on those ones

stairway to heaven ,champagne elegance, honk your horn , song of norway,are great iris stairway to heaven and honk your horn
are also great show iris with great branching and show stalks

I'd been thinking about Ozone Alert. It's such an odd color in the photos I've seen--like a weird designer color:)

Blissfulgarden, what do you mean for a border ? flower ? or material item ? are you doing raised border ?

dmac085, thanks for the kind compliment.

oh btw i didnt mean to say wit lol

Yes, Williit, I'm using a raised bed. Here in Louisiana, that's the only way I can get the soil appropriate for irises. If I dug down and amended the soil, I'd basically be creating a swimming pool for my irises because the soil for them would be so much lighter than all the surrounding areas. The water would migrate there every time it rained. So, I'm planning to go up 8-12 inches. I've done mounded beds that high for other plants, but to avoid too much erosion, those beds are all covered with ag-mat below mulch. Obviously, I can't use that to prevent erosion with the irises since they would rot under all that! I was hoping to see photos of other beds to spark the imagination!

Okay, then I would suggest big ole rocks. I have no idea what you have readily available to you but I have seen gardens with mountain stones bordering them and they are nice. Of coarse the weed wacker might be used a bit more often around them all.

Thanks dmac085 for your compliment. I also live in a rural area and try to contain my gardening for more impact and ease of maintenance and also have alot of clay in our soil. We repurpose alot of different things and this year my dear husband came across a tank 6.5' x 6.5' x 8' tall. We made planting 12 " deep planting rings out of the top portion of the tank and had after straightening the cuts 30" left on the bottom for another koi/waterlily pond. Both of us now have become accustomed to looking at things with a different eye, anxious for him to retire so we can both go on the hunt more often! lol. Hope this offers some inspiration! Willit Grow your iris beds are gorgeous!

Thanks Koiwings, I like your pond also ! I too have a koi pond and I don't want to hyjack this thread to a pond thread but I gotta see if I can find my picture of it.
Well I found one but not my favorite of it and I don't know how to erase it so here it is.

No worries, Willit, I love ponds too. I love the flagstone you used... very nice! We've built one at the last few houses we've owned. Here's a pic from our last house. This one was taken at the end of winter, so the grasses are a bit brown edged, but the Louisiana irises are about ready to send up their stalks and the Homestead verbena has just begun it's bloom. I guess I need to take one at this house too... it's my favorite so far! Ev

This is a shot of 1/3 of my raised bed - I have iris, daylilies and a few miniature roses....the daylilies are coming out this month and more TB's going in!

Oh good, I'm glad you like them too. Yours is really pretty too. Wow ! that water is soo clear that your floating plants appear to be suspended in air instead of floating.

Thanks, Willit. We had been plagued with algae water drudgery at our house before that one, so I switched to the Hozelock Bioforce with the UV light at our last house. It's an above ground filter, and it made a HUGE difference in the water clarity. We didn't have to clean it nearly as often, even with lots of sun. When we moved to the house where we are now, we bought a bigger Hozelock with UV (same filter but bigger because we have a bigger pond here), and it works equally well. It's SOOOO much easier and more effective than the in-pond filters we had used previously!!!

MrsJ, LOVELY garden! Do you have a full garden shot? I'd love to see it! Ev =)

I don't have one right now, I took everything off my computer and put it on disk - now I have to figure out how to look for certain pics - that should be fun!

Sorry about posting in the wrong thread!
Likely should be posted in the forum called "Obsessions And What To Do About Them" but I moved from a 3-acre piece of land to a small city lot (25x40). Just couldn't get rid of a single Bearded Iris so lifted all the sod and planted as many as I could fit (over 250)

When I ran out of room, I invaded a friends garden and planted 71 over there!

Here is what it looked like all planted last fall before the fencing contractor arrived.

robicho--did I mention how awesomely cool I think you are?! That it just so perfect! What's the verdict from your neighbors?

I'm in an apt. right now and the neighbors just moved and I'm half tempted to dig up their front bed:lol:

Hi dmac085!
I'm completely fenced in and because it's not a condo, I can pretty much do what I want on my own property.(condo corporations are VERY strict about what you can do on your own property!) The neighbors were very intrigued last summer when I rented a sod lifter and got rid of every blade of grass! LOL Although my garden was not open to public during bloom season this year, I often had the gate open and many neighbors would wander in to look at the rainbow of color! Next year's bloom season will be much better so I will open to public and to garden & iris societies on weekends.

I do miss country living though! I had my entire collection spread out on a 1/2-acre and very often would come home to find artists at the side of the beds painting away! I was also in 'Equestrian' country and very often, large groups would pop by on horse-back and take pictures of the beds. I really enjoyed the enthusiasm from passers-by during bloom season and really miss that interaction! Oh well, city-folk can be just as enthusiastic so I'm really looking forward to next year's season!

Non-gardening folk are always surprised at the bloom on irises--"I didnt know thay had so many colors" etc.