Here they are...okay. I get tired of pulling off the dead leaves, and some spread too fast, interfering with the roses, and even the rebloomers have only a few weeks of bloom per year. I've gotten more satisfaction from daylilys, which can bloom for six months, though they have their own problems with dead foliage, and one must be careful with colors--they don't all "go" with roses.

HOWEVER every garden and climate and gardener are different. YMMV. :)

Thank you for posting. Beautiful photos.

Oh, I love my iris also! Last year, they were in full bloom for Mother's Day weekend; long before the daylilies. My gardens looked like a Monet painting. It was a welcome respite after a long, cold winter. Two weeks later, the roses bloomed, and then later in July/August, the daylilies strut their stuff.

I bought a ton of iris from Schreiners in Oregon, and most of them were touted to be rebloomers, but I think winter comes too quick here for them to rebloom because they just never have. I really like the bi-colored ones, along with the blue...heck, I guess I like them all!

Here's another run of companion eye-candy!!

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/peren/msg0107450927332.html

Ronda

Here is a link that might be useful: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/peren/msg0107450927332.html

Wow, gottagarden is an artist! I have been planning on getting irises this Fall to plant, and this really gives me inspiration to do some research.

Got suggestions of good places to buy?

Thanks!

I ordered some very nice irises from Blue J iris last year. They have a HUGE selection and the plants arrived looking very, very good. The prices seemed good to me, too.

They have come up, some already with buds. Some bloom later, so I'm not worried.

Another companion that I'm really excited about this year is larkspur. A very nice lady in N.C. was kind enough to give me some seeds. They have sprouted and seem to be growing nicely. Thanks, Linda.

Here is a link that might be useful: Blue J Iris

Brace yourself: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cottage/msg112001373040.html

More of Gottagardens photos. I am humbled.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cottage/msg112001373040.html

loving the links, guys! I really enjoy irises and I'm trying some more daylilies this year. Other types of lily type things dont really do well for me, but I think daylilies should be fine

Ronda,
Those were also great pics..I had seen the red bed post a year or two ago and remembered it. I think gottogarden has a great eye and could make a gardening book using her own photos.

Jeff, I'm glad the larkspur are up. I have done a lot of thinning on mine and have more to do. Sometimes they need staking. Once you have them, you'll always have them if you let them go to seed.

I have not bought irises from a mail order nursery but hear good things about Schreiners and BlueJ. Snow Peak nursery also looks good. There's one in TN I'd like to go see in bloom, Wild Iris Rows. Looks like iris people get as obsessed as rosarians. To them irises are not companion plants. Some are as exotic as orchids. There used to be an iris lady near me who sold them $1 each. I too find that they crowd out roses sometimes, but I think they're so beautiful, especially when in drifts, that they deserve more space of their own.
Linda

How tall does your larkspur get....seems like mine was 18" max.

I find both irises and daylilies to be an awful lot of work. Both are a bit too successful under my conditions. I have a fertile sandy clay soil they seem to love, and they increase so fast that I am constantly dividing them. The daylilies need to be divided about every two years, and the irises more frequently than that, about every year to year and a half. They are quite pretty. I grow a a few clumps of irises and one or two daylilies, but that is it for me here.

Rosefolly

Ronda,
My larkspurs grow up to 3 or 4' tall. I don't remember what variety they are.

Gottagarden has the most incredibly beautiful compositions of plants. She is truly an artist using her blooms as a medium.
kay

I agree with the Californians: iris love it here, and get to be a chore with their enthusiastic growth. Much worse is that they get Bermuda grass in amongst the rhizomes and the only way to remove it is to lift the iris clump. I have a lot of big old clumps of primitive kinds that I MUST do something about...plant them alongside the road? Perhaps more developed types would be less vigorous. I haven't really come to grips with iris yet, but their turn will come.
Melissa
P.S. The descriptions of delphinium culture are making me wonder whether they wouldn't grow happily here, aconite also. A lot of classic English garden plants do surprisingly (to me) well here, summer drought and all.

Someone in my town has theirs alongside the road with a rock edging. They look great massed together. I must not be a perfectionist with my irises because they seem low maintainance to me. I think to get big masses of color you need a lot of space for them to spread. I plan on asking gottogarden how close she spaces hers when she first makes a bed. They don't bloom all that long but there are early and late varieties so that extends the bloom time. Some that I have are extremely fragrant.
For areas where irises are too exuberant, it seems they could be useful in dry, inhospitable places where other plants are not happy, if you like irises. I have some in a gravelly area near the street. Siberian irises suppossedly like more water but they seem equally drought tolerant to me.

It must be the dry heat here but irises and day lilies don't have the explosive growth some of you describe and therefore they make perfect companion plants for me. The iris flowers are a wonderful bonus (I have reblooming ones) at unexpected times of the year but it's really their growth habit, and that of the day lilies, that makes them a valuable accent plant in the garden. My day lilies only bloom in spring and early summer, which is just as well, since I have the common yellow and gold ones. Cutting out the spent bloom spikes on the day lilies seems like the most onerous chore, right along with cleaning out the dead fronds at the bottoms of the plants. For me the best companion plants have turned out to be pelargoniuns, which bloom for most of the year in white and fuchsia, and make a great companion for the roses I grow. Very little maintenance and lots of blooms. And, last but not least, the animals and snails leave them alone.

Ingrid

If you're talking irises, you have to distinguish between the most common "bearded" and other types.

IMHO Siberian Iris is the best companion plant for roses grown here because:
SI enjoy the same conditions - moist, acid soil
they stay low 20-30", great to cover bare legs
SI produce lots of attractive, bushy, spear-shaped foliage which stays green well into fall
SI form is natural and relaxed in contrast to most roses
they are really easy to grow requiring no maintenance

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Harry, that's beautiful. I'd grow these for the foliage alone, which I like better than that of the bearded irises. Wonder if they like it hot.....

Ingrid