Cultivation
Irises are extensively grown as ornamental plants in home and botanical gardens. Presby Memorial Iris Gardens in New Jersey, for example, is a living iris museum with over 10,000 plants, while in Europe the most famous iris garden is arguably the Giardino dell'Iris in Florence (Italy) which every year hosts one of the most famous iris breeders' competitions in the world. Irises, especially the multitude of bearded types, feature regularly in shows such as the Chelsea Flower Show. Irises grow in any good free garden soil, the smaller and more delicate species needing only the aid of turf ingredients, either peat or loam, to keep it light and open in texture. The earliest to bloom are species like I. junonia and I. reichenbachii, which flower as early as February and March (Northern Hemisphere), followed by the dwarf forms of I. pumila which blossom in Spring, followed in early Summer by most of the tall bearded varietis, such as the German Iris and its variety florentina, Sweet Iris, Hungarian Iris, Lemon-yellow Iris (I. flavescens), Iris sambucina, I. amoena, and their natural and horticultural hybrids such as those described under names like I. neglecta or I. squalens and best united unter I. × lurida.
Read more about this topic: Iris (plant)
Famous quotes containing the word cultivation:
“Let these memorials of built stone music’s
enduring instrument, of many centuries of
patient cultivation of the earth, of English
verse ...”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)