TALL BEARDED IRIS, MY FAVORITE PINKS, PART ONE

By  Dawn Mumford

Looking at photographs of your irises is one way to enjoy your irises beyond the bloom season. I would like to share pictures of my favorite pinks, but I have so many that I will have do it in two parts. 

'Designer Gown' by Ghio 1985

(This will be 'historic' next year: it will be 30 years old.)
This beauty has a fine gilt edge on it.  You don't see it until the sun hits it and then it is an eyelash wide line of gold on the edges of both the falls and the standards.  Oh My!

'Magical' by Joseph Ghio 2007

 Wister Medal 2014. 

This was my first bloom year for this iris and it took my breath away.  It has extravagant ruffling. 

Many of my "pinks" have a lot of shrimp color in them.  In the garden I still label them as pinks. So I am grouping them together.  It is only in a collage or viewing the photographs and iris side by side that you see that there is a slight orange or shrimp colored cast.  Sometimes I grow similar colors together so that I can see the subtle color difference.  It also makes a bigger splash of color.  Here is a collage of colors side by side to show differences in pinks and corals, and shrimp.  

'My Ginny' by Spoon 2000

This one is one of my husband's favorites irises.  It grows well here.



'Electrabrite' by O. Brown 1983

This one is aptly named because it seems lit from within.  

'Geniality' by O.  Brown 1981

This has long been in my top 25 irises.  It is rather short at 31 inches.  It also doesn't increase as well as lots of others but the colors are worth it. It has both ruffling and lacing.   

'Heatheridge' by Joseph Gatty 1985 

This one has a lavendar flush where the standards and falls come together.  

'Rose Tattoo" by Nearpass 1976 

 This is another that my husband likes.  Some years it has a lot of tattooing and other years it doesn't.  

'Lovely Kay'  by Hamblen 1979

This is one of my clearest pinks that has no shrimp or orange cast.  It looks beautiful in the garden planted next to pure yellow and cornflower blue.  

'Kitty Kay'  by Keppel 2002

This iris has a really pretty form.  I have had trouble with the plant itself.  The leaves are not hardy and the plant itself doesn't increase very fast.  But oh, what a bloom!

'Dream Cake'  by R. Ernst 2002

The hot coral beard and the veining make this one a tour stopper.  This is the first year for it to bloom in my garden.  It won a right to stay.  

'Anna Belle Babson' by Hager 1985

(This will also be on the 'historic' list next year.)
This one has a lot of shrimp coloring in it and reminds me of "Beverly Sills" who is one of its parents.  

'Magdalena Louisa' by Brad Kasperek 2003
I heard that Brad named this one after his mother.  It is a lovely broken color iris.  I was a little fearful of broken color at first and this one seemed more subtle than 'Bewilderbeast' and 'Hot Dogs and Mustard'.  I like lots of the broken color irises now and with Zebra Gardens just 21 miles north of me I  can buy all I want until the money runs out, my husband's patience runs out or we run out of room.  

'Falling In Love'  by Ben Hager 1988
I know this looks like many others but how do you resist the name? 

'Femme Fatale' By Gatty, 1988.
She posed for this one at 10:34 am.


I will continue with more favorite pinks in my next post.  Which of these do you like most?  Which pinks do you like best in your garden?