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:
“Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“... in the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment ...”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)