OT: Wanderings of an iris pilgrim, part 2

I see that in Part 1 I left out something very important from our stay in
Ft. Bragg--our visit to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden.  Maybe this
was because John and I did things out of order, having our own
transportation and knowing we would be spending extra time at the Hudson's.
The MCBG is a world-class botanical garden in a community of 6,000 people.
The astonishing thing about it is that some 40 acres of property remain to
be developed as adjunct to the garden.  All major Mendocino coastal
habitats are represented, from a fern canyon to the wind-buffeted prarie
bluffs above the Pacific, and you can see it all from easily walked paths.
There is, of course, a magnificent collection of rhododendrons.  George
Waters remarked on the meticulously maintained perennial garden, and indeed
I was very much reminded of the Royal Botanical Garden in Ediburgh (MCBG
has now at least tied RBGE in my affections) in that respect.  But no other
botanical garden I have visited has natural access to so many habitats and
no other fronts on the ocean.  The potential is endless and the young man
recent brought in from North Carolina to direct the garden has lucked into
the professional opportunity of a lifetime!  We were startled to learn
later that the garden property used to belong to Jay and Terri.  Jay is
very active on the garden's board and is developing plans for an all-iris
planting within the garden.

Okay, now back to my supposed chronological plan.  John Jones and I left
Ft. Bragg and drove down the astonishingly senic coastal highway to its
junction with Rt. 128, which takes you obliquely over two ranges of coastal
mountains with redwood forests, oak savannahs and woodlands, and typical
California interior valleys, down into the wine country of Anderson Valley
in Sonoma County.  At last we rejoined the hustling traffic of US 101 and
rushed on to San Francisco.  After a lunch on the waterfront in Sausalito,
it was on to the airport and (another) delayed flight, this time to
Portland.

My stay in Portland with Philip Prince, my landscape-designer
brother-in-law was important to me in family terms, but probably of limited
interest to those of you reading this, so I'll quickly move on to the next
day--a peak time that stands out just a little higher than the many other
peaks of this great trip.

I drove my little rental car down US 5 to Salem, and without much trouble
found Schreiner's Gardens just off the Highway on Quinaby Road.  The first
impression is of an effeciently organized and very well established
agribusiness.  The office is set among trees, there is a spacious parking
lot, and large sheds occupy much of the space just behind the office.  I
quickly located Tom Abrego, we talked briefly--Tom giving me a very
interesting history of the Schreiner family--and then, since he had to do
the payroll, was turned loose in the display garden.

Schreiner's display facility is not just row on row of irises, but a
carefully planned real garden, in which the irises are arranged so that
colors complement and contrast in ways that highlight the virtues of each
variety.  Interplanted are hundreds of lupines, columbines, Oregon poppies,
and other companion plants that some visitors find more interesting than
the irises themselves.  In fact, Tom told me that they have responded to
that interest by selling these plants locally, as well.  The garden is
divided into two parts by hedges and by family residences--also lovingly
landscaped with rare flowering trees and rhododendrons.  Ray Schreiner is
behind the design and planting, I was told.

Tom also introduced me to Steve Schreiner, responsible for production
operations among other things, an energetic guy with several two-way
radios, cell telephones and pagers hanging from his belt.  Steve is also
the man who organizes a large-scale continuing "show" of cut irises in one
of the large sheds, against times when rain might make it difficult for
people to view irises in the display gardens themselves.

I stumbled around in the display gardens for nearly two hours, almost
overloaded by what I was seeing and clacking my shutter every few minutes,
switching lenses and frequently reloading.  Ran out of film for the second
time.
I saw perfectly grown huge clumps of irises old and new, many with
literally hundreds of bloomstalks.  It all looked so easy!  But later both
Tom and Ray assured me that what visitors don't see are the workers paring
away rot and trimming off leaf spot.  I did see careful grooming going
on--two men collecting buckets of faded blooms.

Tom collected me from the garden, introduced me to the genial Dave
Schreiner, and we went off to a big lunch nearby, where I learned more
about the general operation of the nursery.  Seems to work like a
well-oiled machine, with everyone doing what they do best.  After lunch Tom
had to go back to work, so he pointed me to two big fields of reselected
seedlings.  Here seedlings that have already bloomed once or several times,
and have been deemed worthy of further trials, are lined out to be tested
for continued good performance and uniformity.  I'd have to show you my
pictures to fully get across what was going on there.  All I can say here
is that I have seen the future, at least the future at Schreiner's, and
boy, is it exciting!  Not only new color breaks but the next developments
in such things as the 'Starship Enterprise' line and in the famous
Schreiner blues.  Think blue iris can be developed no further?  Wait a few
years.

I bumped into a tall, hurried man in shorts out there in the seedlings
fields whom I recognized as Ray Schreiner.  Immediately we fell into
detailed talk about irises and new developments, and also about plants in
general.  Like me, Ray turned out to be a real plant nut.  But the bloom
season is short when you have thousands of seedlings and crosses to
evaluate and make, and so was our conversation.  After another few hours I
had finally maxed out on the seedlings, and Ray picked me up in his Jeep to
head back to the office.  But then he kindly offered to show me his
personal garden at home, and led me down the road to a big house across
from the median production fields (I know you all realize this, but
Schreiner's has 100 acres or more of iris-growing fields there in the
fertile, volcanic-derived soil of the Wilamette Valley).  There are few
irises in Ray's home garden, but a wonderful collection of other plants,
including one of my other favorite genera, Euphorbia.  It's a beautifully
designed and kept garden that extends over more than an acre of trees and
shrubs; I got a lot of pictures that should prove useful for my shade
garden book.

I got back to the office as everything was closing, and Tom and Ellen
(Schreiner) Abrego offered to take me over to Keith Keppel's, not far away.

Gosh, I never meant for this to get so long--but now it's time to get the
boy from school again.  Guess I'll have to start earlier next time, and for
now just apologize for having to go to Part 3!

Bill Shear
Department of Biology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
(804)223-6172
FAX (804)223-6374
email<bills@mail.hsc.edu>

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