Irises and Dry Creek Garden

 By Jeff Bennett

In my last article on the history of Dry Creek Garden, we left off with the acquisition of the property as a cattle ranch and it being deeded to Bertha Meyers from her mother Sofia in 1900. The first of three children, Mildred Meyers was born in 1898. Edith Meyers was born in 1900 and Jeanette Meyers in 1905. The cottage at Dry Creek, designed by their father Henry, an Architects, was constructed as a summer retreat from the family home in Alameda, Ca. (near Oakland, California) in 1900. The three daughters would spend their summers here and enjoy the wilds of the rolling hills with a meandering creek through the Dry Creek property. Before they would make the approximately 20 mile trek to the property, a trunk of their needs was sent to the cottage for them for the summer. It must have been a magical place for them to visit the ranch as it was fairly isolated then. Dry Creek is tucked into the foot of a canyon, protected by a high berm of land that shelters the area from wind. The cottage is about 20 yards north of the creek and nestled into the oak studded hillside. The wrap around porch of this modest estate faces south and looking down towards the creek and beyond. Another 20 yards south of the creek, another hill rises to make the gentle canyon complete.

Henry Myers

The Meyers sisters all attended UC Berkeley. This was unusual at a time when many women did not get degrees in mainly male dominated fields. Mildred became an Architect like her father in 1921. Edith studied medicine and became a Pediatrician at Children’s Hospital in Oakland in 1926. Jeanette attended UC Berkeley and studied Botany. It was Jeanette who wanted to develop the gardens at the family retreat at Dry Creek. So in 1928, she and her architect sister, Mildred started the layout of the gardens.

The stone pillars in front were built in 1930 along with the masterfully built stone walls lining the creek to contain it. A vehicle bridge was also built across the creek on cement buttresses. Two more walking bridges were constructed to access the future planting beds on the other side of the creek. Over the next decade, many new native and exotic trees were planted including Incense Cedar, Red Oak (East Coast), Buckeye (Ohio Species), Flowering Cherries, Coast Redwoods and many varieties of fruit trees.

The California Nursery was also very close. This, I’m sure was their source of many of the species of plants in the garden. California Nursery Company was established in 1884. In the 1930’s, it would host bulb festivals that would see over 5,000 visitors in a weekend. They also sold plants wholesale and retail to the public. With it being so close, I am sure some iris were purchased there. Another connection the sisters may have had to iris was Jeanette’s botany classes at UC Berkeley in the late 1920’s to possibly early 30’s. With Sidney B. Mitchell being the University Librarian and Edward O. Essig being the chairman of the entomology department at UC Berkeley who in 1935 became an American Dyke’s Medal winner for Sierra Blue, and then there was also Carl Salbach in the Berkeley hills near the University. William Mohr also lived a few miles from Dry Creek. So as you can see, Jeanette had many opportunities to meet and get to know these early important hybridizers and introduce iris to the gardens at Dry Creek that still grow there today. So far I have identified, Alta California and California Blue as irises that have been here for at least 8 decades by my calculations.

By 1941, work on the garden had halted due to World War ll. The war effort shifted the focus away from garden improvements until the war was over in 1945. Their father Henry Haight Meyers passed away in 1943 at the age of 75. He was a very prominent San Francisco architect and designed over 200 buildings and was the County Architect for Alameda County from 1912 to 1930. Henry’s wife Bertha S. Meyers passed away in 1947 at 78 years of age.

After Bertha’s passing the three sisters started new improvements to the property at Dry Creek. This included a swimming pool and cabana built in 1947 and 1950 respectively. These were the last major improvements done to the property. For Mildred, the Architect, this was her most significant construction to her name that was built. Being a woman, it was much harder for her to be the lead architect on projects in the private or public sector. Mildred retired in the early 1950’s. By 1960, Edith, the Pediatrician, had also retired from Children’s Hospital in Oakland. At that time, she donated $50,000 to the Hospital that has a room that bears her name and legacy. In 1960, $50,000 was a very large sum of money. With homes selling for less than $5,000, it could have  made them some great tycoons. But that was not their style. They were a very generous trio of sisters that never married and lived together their entire lives. With the two oldest working their careers, Jeanette took care of the duties in the home in Alameda and at Dry Creek. Part of their philanthropy began in 1951. They were members of The Alameda Welfare Council and decided to have fundraisers at the garden to raise funds for the council by selling items. To quote the local newspaper; “Country store booths will have a generous display of home cooked foods, handmade gifts, country fresh vegetables, plants and shrubs. After luncheon, guests may linger in the gardens for bridge, tables to be placed beneath gay colored umbrellas or on the wide cool verandas. There will be swimming for those that wish to do so.” These events were for women only and the attendees would number from 415 to close to 700 during the 20 years it was held.

I’ll stop here so that the next issue will show some of the newspaper photos and the annual themes that went along with the annual party.

 

Time For Replant

By Mel and Bailey Schiller

We are closely watching all the wonderful blooms from our Facebook friends from the other side of the world, pondering what we are missing out on this season! We are completely opposite in our transition of the seasons. It is Autumn here.

Autumn is where we get busy...real busy! 

In this blog we thought we would discuss the re-plant of our bearded iris field.

We finalize sales for the beginning of March each year, leaving us to concentrate on sorting which iris will stay and which will go from our garden and catalogue. Not all varieties grow as well as we hope.  We aim to have great garden varieties that survive on little care and water. That is probably one of the aims of every hybridizer! Alas, some varieties grown in different conditions get spotty rust covered leaves and are prone to rotting (even though water is limited in our garden). 

Bailey has cleared the field completely! It is the 1st time we have done re-plant this way...I would say we are 1/2 way at the moment! We would normally re-plant section by section going from our catalogue as a guide.

Bailey and myself like our field to be easily accessible and understood by ourselves and our garden visitors.

The past couple iris seasons Bailey has opted to align the field with our print catalogue that he produces, displaying our stock for the current Iris Season. Everything is in alphabetical order and easy to find.

Why do we re-plant?

We re-plant for many reasons.

1. Our catalogue of varieties is huge. This way we stay highly organized and can find the ordered varieties easily as everything is alphabetically listed as per the sections in our catalogue.

2. After we have dug customer orders the clumps are left in disarray as we select the very best plants for our orders. This means plants may be dug from the middle of the clump and other rhizomes are lifted in the process.

3. At the end of the iris season it is a much easier way for us to tidy the plants after bloom as well as the outer leaves of the rhizome which die back. We lift the entire variety, tidy it and it is put back in the ground. The trimming takes time!

We are extremely careful to keep each variety in its own crate so cross contamination doesn't occur, the varieties do not get mixed up.

4. We dig orders every season. By re-planting every year we can access good sized plants for orders singularly.....have you tried digging a 3-4 year old clump just for one or two plants when the rhizomes are entwined and on top of one another? Being re-planted every year this does not happen.

5. We believe the plant re-growth is much better, the rhizomes are encouraged to spread their wings into a mix of fresh soil that has been replenished with legume straw and fertilizer. We mulch our walkways with legume straw which is rotary hoed into the soil next season.

We trim the iris into a fan shape as the iris grow from the middle leaf and also for cosmetic reasons! We also tend to trim the leaves quite short so the wind doesn't blow them out of the ground.

This is Part 1, the plants coming out of the ground..... Part 2 will be the plants going back into the ground!

THE IRIS LADY OF ZHITOMIR: Nina Miroshnichenko

By Sylvain Ruaud

Today the countries which made up the Soviet empire have become, behind the United States, the largest suppliers of new varieties of irises. It was only after the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the "Iron Curtain" that this exceptional development took place. But this does not mean iridophilia didn't exist there before these events. Despite considerable difficulties in obtaining western varieties capable of providing the necessary elements for their work, passionate gardeners made crosses and obtained irises which, although they did not reach the level of evolution and the quality of western varieties, demonstrated that they had genius. Nina Miroshnichenko cannot be overlooked in this context. Indeed, long before the disappearance of totalitarian regimes and the opening towards the West of what was once the USSR and its satellites, she had devoted a large part of her life to iris hybridization.

Antonina Opanasievna Miroshnichenko was born in the Kiev region of Ukraine on November 13, 1914. She therefore only knew the communist regime in her country and in neighboring Russia. She became interested in horticulture during her university years as she studied at the Kiev College of Agriculture (now an entity of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine). As was fitting she subsequently worked as an agricultural engineer in Zhitomir (in Ukrainian: Житомир, in Russian: Житомир, in Polish: zytomierz), a large garrison town in western Ukraine a town that over the centuries experienced a complicated existence, passing from Poland to the Russian Empire, before becoming part of its current nation. She married an officer of the Red Army, but continued her work as an engineer nonetheless, especially in the city of Uzhgorod (in Ukrainian: Ужгород; in Russian: Ужгород; in Hungarian: Ungvár; in Romanian: Ujgorod, in Slovak: Užhorod), another city in western Ukraine, on the border with Slovakia, also very marked by Slovak, Austrian, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian influences. She lived there until 1956, before returning to Zhitomir where she remained until the end of her life, at age 95, in 2009.

Was it the historical traces of the more western regions of Europe, or the inevitable contacts with the neighbouring states of Uzhgorod that led her to become interested in plants that were little known in her country of origin? In any case, as soon as she returned to Zhitomir, she began to hybridize gladioli and lilies, then irises. Circumstances, as one can imagine, did not allow her to come into contact with the few other iris lovers in the Soviet empire, so she remained a maverick of hybridization. She gradually acquired extensive knowledge of genetics and for many years pursued her little path as an enlightened amateur. Taking care to stay away from the events that marked the Stalinist and then Brezhnevian years, she hybridized only for her pleasure, without any idea of competition. As soon as it was possible, she occasionally sent some of her offspring to the West; it was more to find out if her work was worthwhile than to win medals! At some point she made a few dozen recordings of her crosses but  gave no indication of origin. Perhaps she had her own doubts about the varieties she used for hybridizing knowing the adventurous conditions under which American varieties were obtained at the time.

Her family, who religiously protected her work, counted nearly two hundred varieties preserved, even though only 41 were regularly registered. The greatest moment of glory for this production came when, in 2007, 'Soloviniyia Noc' won the FRANCIRIS © competition. I lived the moment when Milan Blazek, the great Czech irisarian, who speaks perfect Russian, called her on the phone to announce the victory of her iris, and I heard in the voice of this very old lady the joy and emotion of this remarkable consecration. Perhaps, indeed, it is Nina Miroshnichenko's masterpiece. It is an original iris, with light purple petals hemmed with white, and dark purple veined sepals. The plant is beautifully sized, healthy, robust, the flowers, well proportioned, numerous and long lasting. Everything you need to make a competitive iris. But a few other of her irises deserve to be mentioned. I think of 'Sladky Greh', of 'Novoye Vrema' - little cousin of 'Bride's Halo' -, also the spurred pink 'Anatoly Solovianenko', and of the very elegant inverted amoena 'Nebo Angelov'. And lastly of 'Doktor Gorbachev'. I also like 'Khmuroye Utro', an original smoked mauve, but now showing its vintage age.

All these irises, some of which have found their way in some western gardens, are still available in Ukraine, where hybridizers like Igor Khorosh have used them in their crosses (such as the mauve 'Rozpriahaite Khlotsi Konei' which comes from 'Pliaska Sniezhynok' , a majestic pure white iris). They are also well known to Russian and Polish collectors.

Our world of irises is filled with surprises that curiosity makes us discover with pleasure. Nina Miroshnichenko is one of them, and paying tribute to her is a duty but also a pleasure.

Tools for the Iris Garden

 By Bryce Williamson

I have tools for the iris garden that I need and use every day. Recently, I decided to ask the members of Facebook's Iris Lovers group what their favorite tool was for the gardening. Here is a sample of the answers.

Mitch Jameson, from Missouri, has several tools he finds essential: “A 4 tong strong potato/garden fork preferably made somewhere other  than those weak cheap ass things  from China that break and bend so easily; a good 1-2 gallon sprayer for spraying fungicide for leaf spot; a Marshalltown smallish trowel or a good knockoff, sharpened each side for pulling weeds; and a long strong spade to dig deep to turn soil.”

Laura Ann Browning likes “Cobrahead. Short and medium handles.” This is a new product to me.

Heather Grace Haley Broberg  noted that she liked “using OXO kitchen shears to trim iris leaves. I do this when dividing, and to minimize leaf spot. They are easy to separate to clean and sanitize and the grip is very comfortable for extended use.”

Bonnie Perozzi Doolittle has relocated her irises to Oregon and writes: “I would be completely lost without my small size shovel. I am short so this little shovel is just perfect for you. I have them scattered all around so I don’t have to carry them place to place.”

Renee Fraser, former editor of the AIS’s World of Irises blog, wrote that “My favorite garden tool is the spade for shovel pruning non-performing irises!”

Delane H Langton also listed a number of “must have” garden items: “Ergo stainless fork and shovel. Scissors gloves and ergo trowels.” He noted he “may have acquired the remaining US stock of them.”

Ben Lawn’s “absolute favorite piece of garden equipment are my Felco model 9 secateurs. They are incredibly well constructed; I can buy every component as spare parts. Best of all I’m left-handed, and the model 9 is constructed in reverse compared to regular secateurs so they are much easier for a left handed person like me to use.”

Vanessa Spady wrote “I would love to share with you my favorite garden tool because I could not live without it, especially when I’m working with my iris. Iris RN “on your knees“ plant. I can’t do very much with them when I’m standing up, so I don’t use my standup tools for them, I use this odd ducky. I can use it as a garden fork on one side, and as a spade on the other side. I have a good leverage with it because it’s short handled on the ground. And best of all, I can control where I’m putting it because I’m up close, and I almost never (almost) hit an increase or buried rhizome because I’m down low. No idea what it’s called, but this is what it looks like.” I have been told that this is a planting mattock.

Gail Simmons commented that her “favorite iris gardening tools. A potato fork and smaller long handled spade." I had to look this one up and found "Potato forks have flat-fronted triangular-section tines. They are not so good for digging over the soil. They are for gentle diagonal probing and lifting of root crops and tubers from relatively loose soil. They do less damage than the same person with a digging fork.'

Lynda Miller, a well known iris hybridizer now in Oregon, noted “Garden shears (modern version of sheep shears). Can trim foliage for hours without getting tired. We turned Thomas Johnson on to them.”

Lucy Burton wrote short and sweet to the point, “Cape Cod weeder.”

Marilyn Schuster Kiger says her “best tool yet is my Japanese hori hori knife. I can cut, divide, dig deep rooted weeds, lift plants. Strong metal with good balance and wood handle. My go to garden tool.”

Since I started this, I must mention my most important weeding tool—an O-ring hoe. I like it because I can precision weed and there is something infinity satisfying with I feel the snap of the root on the despicable weed. Sadly, this hoe does not seem to be made anymore and I keep going through handles trying to make this O-ring hoe last as long as possible.