Hey Rita, Boy, can I ever relate to not having much space! I will tell you that I have no choice but to grow iris close together, and they have always done beautifully for me. Right now, in my main bed of iris, there are lots of summer blooming annuals--zinnias and cosmos. Larkspur grows really early here, and my first iris start blooming in late April, so those two looked really nice together. When you see photos from Schreiner's they always have lupines growing with the iris. I grow Sea Power and love it. It is a beautiful flower. Keppel and Joe Ghio have a lot of ruffled iris. Check out Adoregon and Kitty Kay from Keppel and Forever Blowing Bubbles by Ghio. I grew FBB this year and was blown away by its garden presence, and My Beloved looks like an even bigger, more dramatic version, though I haven't ordered it. Good luck, Mike in SC

I'm in the same zone. When the spring is warm, you can expect your beardeds to start blooming around April 8. If spring is cool, like it was this year, the iris start to bloom April 15. Even in a cool year, TB iris are mostly bloomed out here by the first week of May. Then Siberians, flag, Louisiana and japanese take over.

What kind of irises? If you want beardeds, especially rebloomers, the very best is Winterberry Gardens just past Leesburg. That's Don & Ginny Spoon, (1-540-888-4447, vspoon@aol.com). Lovely people, very friendly. If you want spurias, japanese or louisianas, Sans Souci irises in Monkton MD is a great source. Bruce Hornstein (lbh0125@emailman.com 410 557-0250) Nicholls Gardens in Gainsville is not bad: Diana Nicholls sells all kinds of irises plus peonies. I'm not sure I believe all her claims for local rebloom, though. 703-754-9623. That said, I have bought many of my rebloomers from Sutton's in CA -- their rebloom chart is fairly accurate, so that if they list an iris as a reliable rebloomer in Z6, it will probably rebloom for me, and you can't beat the prices on their "sunset list" cultivars. And it's too bad you missed the local AIS sale at Meadowlark Gdns a couple weeks back... Lynn Lynn

I'll post something so this will disappear down the list....:)