Re: CULT: How do you feel about interspersing other plants in your iris beds?

Hello Mike,

I'm going to add a mildly dissenting voice from the other posts.  I think
how successfully other plants can be interspersed with bearded irises may
depend on factors like extreme heat, rainfalls amounts and planting soil.
Here I think beardeds do some better in the spring season with no
competition.  When our extreme summers go into play usually before the end
of bloom season, plants with some shade and the cooling that shade provides
them clearly benefit from the association of the neighboring plants.  They
tend to look better and stay healthier than plants in full sun with
sparkling clean beds.  It tends to be dry here interspersed occasionally
with showers or damp weather.  Irises with low plants on the soil are less
likely to develope leaf spot.  Rank growth (as tall as the irises) traps
moisture and prevents air circulation and then leaf spot can be
unmanageable.  My natural soil is red clay mostly with little organic
material.  It is naturally lean and difficult.  In spite of repeatedly
applying amendments, it tends to retain that character.  I can't tell that
irises in completely clean beds grow differently than those with companion
plants crowded around.  But then I've experimented with a thick mulch on
some and those were unaffected as well.  How a plant does here seems
dependent on its natural proclivities for growth and the specific location,
but not whether the location has companion plants or not.

One of my current experiments is using native rubra growing among the
plants.  I simply scattered seeds throughout two beds and let them come up
at random.  The rubra plants are tall and skinny, sort of like larkspur.
Well grown ones can reach 7-8' but only having a diameter of 6-8".  Last
year was the first year the rubra grew and I couldn't tell they affected the
health, growth or bloom of the irises.  A few bloomed the first year, but
they are biennials so this coming spring I should see the big burst.  I
thought they helped last summer.  Certainly they didn't seem to hinder the
iris in any negative way.  There are problems with doing this in the iris
bed, but those problems are aside from how the iris grow using them as
companion plants.

Donald Eaves
donald@eastland.net
Texas Zone 7b, USA - where a common planting seen in my area are iris
planted directly around the base of large trees - and they do very well.

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