Iris and Phlox garden

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Iris and Phlox Garden

An iris or a phlox garden is a safer venture. If stock is propagated for a few years before the definite planting, the expense need be very little; possibly nothing at all, if there are kind neighbors. Nor is there the great maintenance and renewal expense of a well-ordered rose garden.

The iris garden may be made a beautiful place the year round by using no other flowers. The bloom of Iris pumila, Iris cristata, the German, Spanish, English, Siberian and Japan irises and the blue and yellow flags will be continuous from April into July, but before and after some of the foliage will be attractive. If the rest of the planting be small evergreens, with a bit of water and some rocks, there will never be the scraggliness that a rose garden is bound to show at times. Unless it be the curious, but capricious, /. Susiana, reject the strange-colored irises. Choose the clear colors and not too many of them in one class, if the garden is not very large.

A phlox garden will start to bloom in April and so late as November there is likely to be a bit of flower color here and there. But all through the winter there will be the broad bronzed leaves of P. ovata and the lighter green of P. subulata, P. timoena and P. divaricata. These are April and May phloxes, but not all of them. Later come the tall P. suffruticosa and the taller P. panlculata.

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