Tall Bearded Iris 'NORMA OF IRWELL' wins the Dykes Medal 2012

Tall Bearded Iris 'Norma of Irwell' has been awarded the Dykes Medal (NZ) for 2012, hybridised by New Zealand's wizard of Tall bearded Iris breeding Ron Busch and named after Ron's lovely wife. Introduced by Julie May from 'The Iris Garden' who has always raved about this iris. Well substanced blooms with dark violet ruffled and slightly open standards with even darker violet slightly flared and ruffled falls that has an eye catching small white area beneath the violet tipped bronze beards, oh and not forgetting the very good branching...

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Paul Black's Favorite Iris Seedling 2012.

Email received from Paul Black today who writes "We've had quite a nice bloom season with just enough adverse weather to challenge the durability of the irises we grow. Here is a picture of Mid-America Garden on May 20. I'm also attaching a picture of one of my favorite new seedlings for this year. It is a broken color line that comes from completely different breeding than the old Ensminger / Kasperek lines." My first impression 'An outrageous prism' and you can see with the clump shot every petal is totally different, its certainly...

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Tall Bearded Iris SURFIE GIRL

Over recent years there was a lot of whoop and holler about the difficulty of importing irises to New Zealand. Believe it or not, this issue raised its ugly head again with regard to a couple of new unusual colour-toned plicatas shown in recent international Iris publications and also featured in catalogues that have been received in New Zealand. These new irises have colours very similar to 'Surfie Girl'. It gave the last gaspers a chance once again to resurrect the monotonous moaning regarding the lack of ability to import new...

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Tall Bearded Iris CORAL SUNSET

Extraordinary Apricot Orange Irises are not all that common surprisingly, and when you find a good one it instantly becomes a keeper, so needless to say Schreiner's 'Coral Sunset' is not an iris that will be leaving home any time soon. A strong apricot orange colouration that is sun fast and has most likely inherited the clean white centre on its falls from its parent 'Piping Hot' (Schriener's 1981). Well balanced medium sized blooms on 3 branches with 7-8 buds almost always double...

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Japanese Iris growing in New Zealand

Hi folks, a great heads up. Eddie Johns of Otara Birch Gardens has had the blog nzata@otarabirch which has being around a good while. The situation has changed a little with Eddie now having returned to better health and has started posting on Facebook where he has loaded up the page with some great photos of his extraordinary seedlings and is inviting visitors to the page to leave their comments! Here's hoping he starts registering them, because they are very classy seedlings and god knows its...

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Tall Bearded Iris THORNBIRD

Strong growth, bold colour tones, blooms make a distinctly striking statement, it's the multi-award winning 'Thornbird'. So what's not to like ?? RHS Trial of Tall Bearded Iris 1998-2000 (An RHS Long Term Trial) There were 97 entries in this Long Term trial of Tall Bearded Iris which were assessed by the Joint Iris Committee over three years. All Tall Bearded Iris recommended for the Award of Garden Merit need to have the following qualities: weather resistance several flowering stems a minimum of six buds per stem. 'Thornbird'...

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