Day 146 • Something Beautiful 2022: The Siberians

Something Beautiful is the resurrection of a 2014 initiative to find a visual feast for each day of the year.

Though a lover of iris since childhood, the slender, delicate and deep sapphire-colored Siberian did not become part of my garden until the Muchmore gardens in Cincinnati. There, I cultivated a beautiful and large stand. On arriving at Muchmore, there had been no irises — no gardens, for that matter. The pilgrimage south was accompanied with white irises from my Mom’s garden, dwarf purple from sister of choice Kathy, and exquisite dwarf bronze from my McFarland garden. All made the trip to Cinci and thrived but the bronze dwarf irises.

When I moved to Villa Lucci, I again dug some of the legacy irises to take along. The move took place on a bitter day the second week of November and I worried about taking them to a place much colder and transplanting so late in the season. At that point, there were no flower gardens at the villa except for a group of yellow daylilies. Rapture best describes my joy when the following spring the irises not only emerged but bloomed that first year. By last fall, the Siberians had grown and expanded into another lovely stand behind some of the early dwarf purple and the later white from my parent’s farm.

Early fall last year, I removed two trees growing into the front of the house and began to develop the villa Zen garden. Once again, I asked the Siberians to share and took half their number and some of the dwarf purple on another journey, this time to the Zen garden. I have watched the new plantings eagerly this long awaited spring. The dwarf’s bloomed early as always and, yesterday, two lovely and hardy Siberians opened. Beautiful companions for the Persian allium.