Hello everyone.
I've been growing iris since the early
80's, after a friend gave me a white/lavender iris that I
admired. It's one I've been unsuccessfully trying to id since. I
ordered a bunch of TB's from a US catalogue, planted them, and they all
died. There was no one else growing named iris back then, so I had no
one to help me figure out what I'd done wrong, aside from an old book I
found 'The Iris Book' by Molly Price, 1966.
I used to visit Morden Research Station and
they had these huge clumps of tiny iris I now know were MDB's and
SDB's. It was lust at first sight! I found a nursery that sold
some of these beauties in pots, but all were unlabelled. I bought as
many as I could. The obession was begun! I planted them all in a
raised bed, part of the circular drive on my country property. They
thrived. I never did anything to them except weed. People used
to drive up the driveway each spring, look at the iris, then drive off
again.
In the early 90's, I discovered Chuck Chapman
had a catalogue. Oh boy! I ordered 100 or so, some that I
thought were close in description to my unlabelled iris, as there weren't
too many pictures in the catalogue. I ordered more each year
since. You can see how my iris collection started to exponentially
expand, just from trying to id those original iris.
I moved to this property in 1999 and brought
many of my plants with me. There were no gardens here, so it was a big
project at the end of a very rainy July. 3 nursery beds were built
first for the iris.
In 2001, the garden became a display garden for
both MIS & DIS, plus my quest to become an AIS judge began. There
were no other judges in Manitoba, so I had to travel to Ontario for my
training. In 2007 & 2008, 2 judges from Ontario came here to
finish my training in 2007, plus finish the trg for our 2nd Manitoba judge
in 2008. My garden was used both years for garden judge
training.
Over the years, I started to order different
classes of iris other than just bearded, to round out my
collection, and now have some lovely ones, including species iris, and some
that have no id. I versicolor grows wild about a 2 hr drive east of
here. My collection is now well over 1000 different iris, most with a
2nd clump for backup.
I live on a 20 acre property near a small rural
town about 30 min east of Winnipeg, hence it's easier to just put "near
Winnipeg" in my signature. They only know me as the iris lady around
here, even after more than 10 years of living here.
So, that's me. More than you wanted to
know, I'm sure. ;)
El(eanor Hutchison), near Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada, Z3
AIS Region 16
AIS Judge
MIS and DIS Display Garden
