By Renee Fraser
The highest award given to a Japanese iris (Iris ensata) is the Payne Medal, and this year it was awarded to the iris "Bewitching Twilight" by this column's featured hybridizer, Chad Harris of Mt. Pleasant Iris
Farm in Washington State.
Chad describes himself as a
natural gardener with no formal training. He is a fanatic for form,
structure, and texture of the plant in whole.
For Chad, "the bloom is just
the icing on the cake. I am a nut for the textural form of a plant, that is
the way that I have landscaped the last two homes. I think first what
shape, color of leaf, how tall and wide the plant gets at maturity.
Then I think on bark, berries, flowers, fragrance, and the timing of
each as a visual point in the garden. Also you have to think about
sun, water, and soil, and with this information your plant list for a
particular spot can be narrowed down. Mind you that this starts with the
skyline, and canopy of the trees. So you can see that I shop for a plant to
fill a spot, I don't buy a plant and try to figure out were to plant it."
Excellent advice for all gardeners. And look at the results!
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| Garden of Chad Harris |
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| Garden of Chad Harris |
As Chad points out, Iris ensata has two different foliage forms, upright and fountain, and so it is well-suited to many different garden needs.
As is the case with so many of us, Chad's early interest in irises
was encouraged by his grandparents. He
visited public gardens with his
grandmothers, and there he was exposed to the exotic Japanese irises. Years later he searched everywhere for this
plant to use in landscaping a home garden, recalling that they would add much
needed upright grass-like texture, as well as bloom between the spring Rhododendrons
and the summer Roses and Fuchsias. That long summer search thirty years ago (before
the Internet!) finally led him to Aitken’s Salmon Creek Gardens. Terry Aitken did not sell Japanese Irises, but
he kindly gave him one named variety and two seedlings by Walter Marx, and
he referred Chad to another irisarian growing this elusive iris- Lorena Reid.
After these visits to iris farms, and with the instruction of Terry and Lorena,
Chad began to dab pollen using the irises he grew in his small city garden. After a few Iris Conventions, he progressed from
dabb(l)ing to developing a hybridizing program with goals. Chad's first goals were focused on the extension
of the bloom time, by using very early blooming plants and plants that bloom
for a long time with good sequence, where a bloom shrivels up and gets out of
the way before the next bud starts to open.
Chad believes this to be a very desirable trait that hybridizers and
growers should watch for.
Chad says " ‘Pleasant Earlybird,’ (1996) though
simple in flower form, was one of my first introductions that conforms to these ideals. When
grown well it has a very early bloom and a long continuation with one to two
branches, carrying five to seven buds per stem." He notes that "this plant in the cool NW marine climate can be in color for four to
five weeks."
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| 'Pleasant Earlybird' |
‘Coho’ (2005) was also introduced for its early bloom
season, with five to seven buds per stem. Personally, I am smitten with this pure pink, a color hard to come by in the more common tall bearded irises.
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| "Coho" |
Chad moved from the city to a country farm 18 years
ago, which gave him the space to be able to expand his hybridizing goals. He has been working on an ever-blooming Iris
ensata for cooler coastal climates. Although
he has had success with seedlings that would bloom all summer and
fall until the killing freeze of winter, the blooms were contorted and would
not open properly. He "out crossed" to a different line,
and by 2012, good flower form and summer-long bloom resulted! Chad cautions that "only time in the garden will tell if
these plants will be introduced as garden-worthy reblooming plants."
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| 007JB/07JBa Seedlings |
He has also expanded his breeding program to include
a multi-style arm form. ‘Angelic
Choir’ 2006, ‘Artesian Spring’ 2010, and 'Dalle Whitewater’ 2010, have been
introduced, and he has several seedlings which are also being "lined out"
for possible introduction. Chad finds
this form very pleasing: "the full
round six fall flower form is very much enhanced by a tight cluster of style arms
in the center of the bloom creating a pom-pom, instead of the normal three open
style arms."
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| 'Angelic Choir’ |
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| ‘Artesian Spring’ |
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| 'Dalle Whitewater’ |
Chad says "perhaps one of the hardest things is
to come up with is a new flower color. I am attempting to bring a soft cream yellow
into the bloom, not unlike Dr. McEwen’s Siberian ‘Butter and Sugar’. ‘Bewitching Twilight’ 2000, was the first to
show this, however, it only does this when the sun is weak like here in the
Pacific Northwest. Each generation has
been getting brighter creams in the style arms. What is intriguing me is the fact that the
yellow signal is starting to bleed down the falls, thus creating a wash of
cream. I am also starting to observe this coloring on
the undersides of the falls."
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| 'Bewitching Twilight' |
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| Creamy yellow seedlings |
For further novelty in color, Chad is also working with the rayed pattern (when the veins are lighter than the falls) both in the blue-violet and the red-violet color tones that Iris ensata is known for.
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| 'Sunrise Ridge' 2007; 08JE/09JL Seedling |
Chad is also beginning to breed new species of
irises, including Iris laevigata and Species-X.
Iris laevigata is related to Iris ensata, and it is
also a water-loving iris. Chad finds
that it can have lower water needs in the garden than Iris ensata, however. He believes this may be due to the rhizome
growth of Iris laevigata, which is more horizontal (enabling it to send out
roots to new soils). Chad points out that the rhizome of Iris
laevigata is also twice to three times the size of Iris ensata and probably
able to hold more moisture during dry periods.
Blooming a month before Iris ensata, Iris laevigata, like Iris ensata,
comes in both the red-violet and blue-violet tones along with Alba or white.
In 2012, Mt Pleasant Iris Farm introduced its first
laevigata, a breathtaking flower called ‘Lakeside Ghost’. ‘Blue
Rivulets’, introduced in 2013, has striking blue veins on a white ground.
Others are dark reds, 07LAK2, bright blues, 07LAK4,
very wide whites, 07LAL2, and a six fall white, 02LA2, that has the upright
bloom stem (02LA2 plant) habit that Chad is working for in this Asian species of
iris. Look at the statement made by that clump!
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| ‘Lakeside Ghost’ |
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| ‘Blue Rivulets’ |
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| 02LA2 Clump |
Another
exciting development is Chad's work with a new Species-X plant that has lovely
lime green foliage. Chad says that
"in the Pacific Northwest with our weak spring sun, we have found that these
Species-X plants have very bright yellow foliage due to the lack of
chlorophyll. Being a foliage gardener
myself I find that these plants are beautiful in and out of bloom, and will
work wonderfully in the NW landscape with our dark gray spring skies. The down
side is that most of the plants burn badly with our first strong summer sun, usually
in mid-July. They do, however, eventually grow out of this burn stage with
light lime-green foliage, but look bad for a good two weeks. There
are a very few (one in one hundred to two hundred) that do not burn, it is
these plants that we will be looking at to possibly introduce in the near
future. Our thanks to Dr. Shimizu of
Japan for finding ‘Gubijin’ that will cross with Iris ensata."
I know that I usually get the hybridizer to choose a favorite flower, but Chad could not decide, so he chose a favorite cross. Since he likes to share his results with others, this was a great idea. His favorite cross in thirty years is 'Night Angel' x 'Frosted Intrigue'." Here are the gorgeous results of that cross, reading from left to right, top to bottom: 'Artesian Spring', 'Columbia Deep Water', Seedling 02JC13, Seedling 08JE1, 'Dalle Whitewater', Seedling 08JE, and Seedling 08JE d.
Do Iris ensata grow in your zone? Which of these beauties would you most like to try? Or perhaps you would like to see more. If so, you can see and read more at www.mtpleasantiris.com and at the Society for Japanese Irises website.
