I have seen an iris I planted several years ago flower for the first time – it’s beautiful and although pale and patterned contrasts with the dead plant matter like a lotus growing out of the mud. It’s called Iris reticulata ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. The first year it put up two narrow leaves. Then the bed was dug and I thought I’d lost it – nothing the next 2 years. And now this! Something that survived the snows.
I have just found it why it survived watching Carol Klein on Gardener’s World – it doesn’t need the baking in the summer that most iris reticulatas need.
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Oh how wonderful I adore Iris reticulata as I always seem to forget about them until they flower. I love the fact that they don’t, as you say like to bake, as that is one thing I don’t like about Irises. Not that I am a tidy gardener, the contrary, but I do hate to see their roots on the surface, it bothers me when I’m weeding, silly I know…
Maybe if you have a raised bed you should move it there for you to enjoy all the more?