Beginner's Corner

Beginning irisarians have a number of questions and the American Iris Society has a number of resources to help answer these questions. Here you will find links to many of these resources. One of the best resources for everything iris is your local club. You can find them by locating your geographic Region and following its link to Affiliates.

Selecting Irises

There are so many beautiful irises to choose from. A recent World of Irises blog entry by Bryce Williams recommended Fifteen Tall Bearded Irises For The Beginner. Tom Waters offers advice with An Arilbred Iris Sampler which explains the classification of arilbred and offers examples of each to start with. For Louisiana Irises, Hooker T. Nichols offers some older varieties for beginners in Louisiana Irises which is another World of Irises blog. Others to consider are award winners, various popularity polls, and the Tall Bearded Iris Symposium.

Growing Irises

You can find videos to help with growing irises on YouTube and other services. The Iris Video Library has some of these for you. For example, How to Divide Tall-Bearded Irises and How to Divide and Re-Plant Irises (in New Mexico). Tom Waters offers recent advice on Winter Gardening on the World of Irises blog.

Growing Louisiana Irises by Ron Killingsworth has both suggestions for growing these beauties and points to other sources for advice.

Learning More

The American Iris Society and the Iris Encyclopedia have many ways for you to learn more. One way to find these is using the Index to General Iris Topics which you will find in the left hand column of each page.

The Irises Bulletin published by the American Iris Society for members has articles helping beginners from time to time. Searching an index that covers up to July/August 2012 gave these suggestions for recent articles:

The January 2011 issue of Irises Bulletin, p 34-38 Iris Growing for the Beginner compiled by Rita Gormley.

An older one would be Siberian Iris Culture For Beginners by John Coble in the April 1999 issue, p 76-78.

Also: Beginner's Luck: Don't Count On It! Common Mistakes Beginning Iris Growers Make by Irene Otte in July 1984 issue, p 36-46.

Irises Bulletin Beginner's Corner

In 2022 the Irises Bulletin introduced a Beginner's Corner feature to provide basic informative guidance to the AIS membership with new members as the target audience but much of the what is included is informative for all of the AIS membership. Members can volunteer to provide articles to be included by sending them to bulletineditorialboard@irises.org .

Container Grown Iris

This feature is a four part series extracted from the AIS Webinar #23 "Growing Iris in Containers" by Doug Chyz.

• Part One: Container Gardening
• Part Two: Container Soil
• Part Three: Feeding Your Container-Grown Iris
• Part Four: Growth in Containers

Additional Resources To Add

AIS Webinars - Growing Bearded Irises and Growing Beardless Irises are good places to start. Also see Growing Irises in Containers.

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-- WayneMesser - 2016-12-08