RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year

Just how important is this.......... Well.... Very Important! The whole 'Iris World' benefits from this amazing publicity.
The RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year 2014 has been announced, second place went to Iris 'Domino Noir', bred by Richard Cayeux in his nursery in France. For 20 years Richard has been breeding towards a true black and white cultivar and after several generations of crosses has succeeded with I. 'Domino Noir'.  A rare jewel which offers a striking and clear contrast,with it's practically pure white standards with an almost imperceptible violet border and jet-black falls and has golden yellow beards. Cut stems can be seen on the Silver-gilt Award winning Cayeux stand in the Great Pavilion.
Six days displaying Irises at Chelsea, one of the greatest Garden Shows on Earth that caters to the 'gardening public' (you know those really important people I keep banging on about) is a truly amazing achievement. To be runner-up for the RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year 2014 and receiving a Silver-gilt award for the Iris display at the Great Pavillion, must be the icing on the cake for Richard, and I send my warmest congratulations to him.

AIS Checklist 2012
DOMINO NOIR (Cayeux, R. 2012) Sdlg. 06 23 A. TB, 33 (84 cm), M S. white; style arms white, amber-yellow crest; F. pure black; beards gold. Magnetisme X 03 79 A: (01 17 A: (Lightshine x 98 169 A) x 01 50 B: (Sixtine C. x Futuriste)).

A hydrangea making its world debut at Chelsea took the top spot and became 2014 RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year. Hydrangea macrophylla Miss Saori (‘H20-2’) has been bred in Kyoto by young plantsman Ryoji Irie and named for his fiancé who has since become his wife. It’s a striking double-flowered, mophead cultivar with each floret having deep rose margins softening to white centres, perhaps it could be called a plicata hydrangea. The blooms are long-lasting, produced in June and on first year wood. The appeal is further heightened by dark foliage. Thrives in full sun or semi-shade, suit border or container growing and can also be used as a cut flower.

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version.
Major Hat Tips and "Merci beaucoup" to Richard Cayeux for his photos, his daughter Hortense for collating and formatting the high resolution photos, and to Catherine Adam for her direction and help with the French Language, and catalogue listings.

Reproduction in whole or in part of this photo without the expressed written permission of Richard Cayeux is strictly prohibited.
Photo credit and copyright Richard Cayeux © .

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Tall Bearded Iris CATHÉDRALE DE CHICHESTER and The Chichester Cathedral Flower Festival 2014.

Cayeux, La Carcaudière, Route de Coullons, France. Iris Lover's Catalogue, 2014.
New 2014 varieties created by Cayeux.
CATHÉDRALE DE CHICHESTER
Tall bearded -Mid-season to late  - Height :85cm- colour: Amoena
A very French iris named after the remarkable British Cathedral where it will be launched! Creamy white standards with finely serrated butter yellow edges. Deep golden yellow falls and orange beards. A very rich tone, sound branching, good substance and averaging 8 buds per stem.


The Chichester Cathedral Flower Festival 2014.
The Chichester Festival of Flowers is a Biennial event which this year will mark the 10th Anniversary. It will be a stunning display of creative, imaginative and beautiful flower designs. and the theme for the 2014 event will be 'The Music Makers', interpreting twelve centuries of music from pop to plainsong, classic to jazz, and sacred to secular. The Festival will have the IRIS for 'plant of the year', and Richard Cayeux is dedicating his new variety 'Cathédrale de Chichester' in contribution to the considerable preservation and development efforts underway at this historic site. Cayeux also plan to bring 14 of their new 2014 intros and to exhibit 6 different colour areas with many Cayeux varieties, and will also include excellent international bred irises.
Held in the gardens of the Royal Chantry in the Cathedral Cloisters, and this year’s festival runs on May 29, 30 and 31, (10am-7pm, Thursday and Friday; 10am-6pm, Saturday).

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version.
Major Hat Tips and "Merci beaucoup" to Richard Cayeux for his photo, his daughter Hortense for collating and formatting the high resolution photo, and to Catherine Adams for her direction and help with the French Language.

Reproduction in whole or in part of this photo without the expressed written permission of Richard Cayeux is strictly prohibited.
Photo credit and copyright Richard Cayeux.  

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2014 Tall Bearded Iris GRANDE COQUETTE

This is Richard Cayeux favourite introduction for 2014 and is certainly a stand out Iris with that 'let me show you a thing or two about colour' look that certainly pushes the boundaries. Its both elegant and bold. (Now who would of thought that combination was possible?)

Cayeux, La Carcaudière, Route de Coullons, France. Iris Lover's Catalogue, 2014.
New 2014 varieties created by Cayeux.
GRANDE COQUETTE
Tall bearded - Late - Height :95cm
Entirely new: large flowers with pale blue standards and greenish yellow falls. Orange beards. A very unusual contrast similar in style to the standard dwarf "Real Coquette". Very attractive and easy to place in mixed borders. Late and prolific flowering. (9 buds per stem).

Don't forget to visit the Cayeux Web Site.

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version.
Major Hat Tips and "Merci beaucoup" to Richard Cayeux for his photos, his daughter Hortense for collating and formatting the high resolution photos, and to Catherine Adams for her direction and help with the French Language.

Reproduction in whole or in part of these photo without the expressed written permission of Richard Cayeux is strictly prohibited.
Photo credit and copyright Richard Cayeux. 

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2014 Tall Bearded Iris ASTANA

Heritage Irises are privileged to have been asked to feature some of the 2014 New Varieties created by Richard Cayeux.
European Irises do not always get the exposure to the English speaking media that they justly deserve so I thought 'OK, 
lets give them a plug'.
Don't forget to visit the Cayeux Web Site.

Cayeux, La Carcaudière, Route de Coullons, France. Iris Lover's Catalogue, 2014.
New 2014 varieties created by Cayeux.
ASTANA
Tall bearded - Mid-season - Height :85cm
Inheriting its excellent branching and numerous buds from its father, "Coup de Soleil", a pleasant medium copper-pink, slightly darker on the standards. Tangerine beards. Long flowering season and very vigorous.

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version.
Major Hat Tips and "Merci beaucoup" to Richard Cayeux for his photos, his daughter Hortense for collating and formatting the high resolution photos, and to Catherine Adams for her direction and help with the French Language.

Photo credit and copyright Richard Cayeux.

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2014 Tall bearded Iris AILE VOLANTE

Heritage Irises are privileged to have been asked to feature some of the 2014 New Varieties created by Richard Cayeux. This Space Age Iris is an absolute  vivid masterpeice. 
European Irises do not always get the exposure to the English speaking media that they justly deserve so I thought 'OK' lets give them a plug.
Don't forget to visit the Cayeux Web Site.

Cayeux, La Carcaudière, Route de Coullons, France. Iris Lover's Catalogue, 2014.
New 2014 varieties created by Cayeux.
AILE VOLANTE
Tall bearded - Mid-season to late - Height :85cm
Bright pink standards with slight purple hues on the edges; pale pink falls with a wide magenta-coloured brim. Coral red beards lengthened by a lovely magenta spoon. A spectacular, well branched "space-age" iris much appreciated by our visitors in 2013. 8 buds on average.

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version.
Major Hat Tips and "Merci beaucoup" to Richard Cayeux for his photos, his daughter Hortense for collating and formatting the high resolution photos, and to Catherine Adams for her direction and help with the French Language.

Photo credit and copyright Richard Cayeux.

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2014 Tall Bearded Iris BAIE DES ANGES

Heritage Irises are privileged to have been asked to feature some of the 2014 New Varieties created by Richard Cayeux.
European Irises do not always get the exposure to the English speaking media that they justly deserve so I thought 'OK' lets give them a plug.
Don't forget to visit the Cayeux Web Site. 

Cayeux, La Carcaudière, Route de Coullons, France. Iris Lover's Catalogue, 2014.
New 2014 varieties created by Cayeux
BAIE DES ANGES
Tall bearded - Mid-season - Height :80cm
A very attractive solid light to medium blue with bright tangerine beards. This iris is a descendant of "Princesse Caroline de Monaco" and "Eau Vive", both blue with tangerine coloured beards. Medium sized flowers with a lovely shape. We feel that the pureness of tone  compensates for the relatively small number of buds (6-7 on average).

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version. 

Major Hat Tips and "Merci beaucoup" to Richard Cayeux for his photos, his daughter Hortense for collating and formatting the high resolution photos, and to Catherine Adams for her direction and help with the French Language.

Photo credit and copyright Richard Cayeux.

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Iris Hybridiser 'Michèle Bersillon'

Michèle Bersillon with her seedling, 9920R. (Sapphire Hills X Surf Rider) 

I’ve been asked to write about who I am and how I came to be an iris breeder. . . so I’ll start with where I’m from. I was born in south-eastern Michigan,USA in 1952, and moved to France in 1986, where I have been living for the last 28 years. I only began to garden actively in the early 1990s when no one else had time to renovate a severely overgrown flowerbed containing (what else?) irises in my mother-in-law’s garden in central France. Well, as previous non-gardener, perhaps I might be forgiven for not knowing anything about irises at the time, so this may explain why we lost a number of varieties after my energetic but somewhat inexpert endeavours. This left quite a sorry-looking gap in the flowerbed and since we had the advantage of proximity to Cayeux’s iris nursery on the other side of the Loire river, we went over there to see the plants in bloom and choose a few new ones to occupy the depleted flowerbed.

This went on for a number of years. . . we happily visited Ets. Cayeux every spring, adding a few new varieties each year, learning more and more about the care that the plants require throughout the growing year as well as basic gardening techniques.
It wasn’t until 1994, during our annual visit to see the iris garden at Ets. Cayeux, that I was shown how to make a cross.  We were admiring the flowers when I noticed a man walking around in the presentation garden with a few iris blossoms and poking at some of the flowers and I said, innocently enough, (What is that man doing to those flowers ?) My husband went over to ask what he was doing and, after introducing himself as Richard Cayeux, he informed us he was making crosses on selected flowers with the pollen of the blossoms he was carrying with him and he then proceeded to show us how to make a cross.  I had no idea that just anyone could do that and hybridizing would certainly have been quite a fancy name for my first-stab effort—and of course I went home and tried it right away, just to see what would happen. I was lucky, because the cross worked, produced 16 seeds and three of them eventually came up, something of a minor miracle. They certainly weren’t great plants by any stretch of the imagination, but it was the start of something.

I didn’t make any more crosses until 1997, as after the first plants came up, we moved across the country and were obliged to live in an apartment in Nancy (north-eastern France) for four years---the young irises also had less than ideal living conditions, since they were confined to their pots---but I rented a piece of land behind my mother-in-law’s garden in central France and began actively hybridizing, bringing the seedlings along in the eastern part of the country, hauling them all the way down to central France and then planting them out and cultivating them over 400 kilometers away from our home residence! We finally moved out to the countryside in eastern France, but unfortunately our soil there was certainly not conducive to iris cultivation, since it is heavy soil that holds too much humidity so I’ve continued to plant my seedlings in the garden I’ve created across the Loire river from Cayeux, dividing my time between home and iris garden.

My first iris to be introduced in the United States was 'Petit Frère' (BB) in 2007, eventually followed by 'Avant-Premère', 'Comédie Française' and 'La Part des Anges' in 2009 and 2010. 'Ecume de Mer', another of my irises, won a gold medal in the Munich International Iris Competition in 2009 and I was very pleased indeed to see 'Comme un Volcan' share the gold medal there the following year, with Richard Cayeux’s splendid iris 'Ciel et Mer', particularly since 'Comme un Volcan' is a direct descendant of one of my three very first seedlings, a second-generation descendant of 9401B (Pink Horizon X Royal Trumpeter). 'Avant-Première' won a bronze medal at Munich the year before last and one of my seedlings won a silver medal last year.  I am proud and very honoured that Ets. Cayeux decided to include my creation, 'La Part des Anges' in their catalogue last year.  

After much searching and a number of complications, I have finally found a new distributor to introduce my plants in the United States, Stout Gardens and I have plans to market more of my creations over there for their first commercial year in order to give them access to the American Iris Society’s awards. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Richard Cayeux for that very first iris-breeding lesson, something I’ll never forget and which changed my life forever. 
Michèle Bersillon 
Nevoy, France, February, 2014.

AIS Checklist 2009

AVANT-PREMIÈRE   Michèle Bersillon, Reg. 2008 Sdlg. 0554C. TB, 37" (95 cm), M;  S. and style arms blue violet; F. pale lavender; beards bright orange, white at end; slight sweet fragrance. 035B: (Coeur d’Hiver x Filardi BF-176: (Night Game x Romantic Evening)) X Fogbound. International 2009.Bronze Medal, Munich International Iris Competition, 2012; Award of Garden Commendation, 2014.

COMME UN VOLCAN  Michèle Bersillon, Reg. 2008 Sdlg. 0136A. TB, 35" (90 cm), M. S. blue violet (RHS 90B), narrow grey (N200C) border; style arms (90B), sides creamy tan (158A), darker (160B) center stripe; F. medium violet-blue (N88A), sides lighter (90B), hafts blended tan (163B); beards orange yellow (23A), very light blue at end, 3-4 cm long blue violet (90B) appendages ending in small flounce; slight sweet fragrance. Derviche X Special Feature. Stout Gardens 2012.

LA PART DES ANGES  Michèle Bersillon, Reg. 2008  Sdlg. 0423E. TB, 37" (95 cm), M;  S. blue violet (RHS N88C) at midrib paling to light blue-violet (92C) at edges; style arms (92C); F. very pale blue (lighter than 91D) aging to white; beards light blue (100D) tipped red (41B); slight sweet fragrance. Fogbound X 9920R: (Sapphire Hills x Surf Rider). International 2010.

Update 2015: Last year Michèle's iris 'Avant-Première' won an Award of Garden Commendation (AGC) a British Iris Society trail garden award which makes 'Avant-Première' now eligible to compete in the Dykes Medal Trial in Great Britain. Well done Michèle, and I am sure the whole of France send you their Congratulations.

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version.

Reproduction in whole or in part of this article and including photo's without the expressed written permission of Michèle Bersillon is strictly prohibited. Photo credit and copyright Michèle Bersillon © .

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New Zealand Tall Bearded Iris ATAVUS

When I first saw this iris bloom at home, my first thought was that I was having another enjoyable mid life crisis that involved visiting the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. This Iris colouration is an acquired taste and some either love it or loath it, me? I put the colours in the loud but possibly interesting file. 'Atavus' grows well, has good plant health, but its the open and somewhat chaotic form of the cream standards and the uneven ruffling on the falls lets the bloom down. Had the form of the bloom been more even on the falls and the standards controlled, coupled with the interesting colours it could have been a brilliant iris. Certainly an Iris that's impossible to take no notice of !!

Courtesy Cayeux Iris, 2013.

'Atavus' is an Iris introduced by Alison Nicoll in 2006 and is very similar to the above photo of the brand new Richard Cayeux 2013 introduction 'Un Peu Fou' which appropriately translates 'A Little Crazy' a label that could apply to both the varieties

Richmond Iris Garden, 376 Hill Street, Nelson. Issue 58, 2008-2009 Catalogue.

ATAVUS: L [A. Nicoll '06] Cream standards with central lilac flush. Tan hafts and border with strong lilac centre.

$24.00

New Zealand Iris Hybridisers Cumulative Checklist 2012

ATAVUS Alison Nicoll, Reg., 2006. Sdlg. A00T2-2. TB, 28″, (72 cm), ML S. cream flushed lilac in centre; style arms cream and lilac; F. strongly washed violet, tan hafts and border; beards red; flared; slight spicy fragrance. Prince George X Outrageous Fortune. Richmond 2007/08; Begg Shield 2009 (NZ) Dykes Medal 2014 (NZ).

As always clicking on the above image will take you to the larger, higher resolution version.

Photo credit and copyright Iris Hunter.

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Richard Cayeux demonstrates how to hybridise Irises

View the BBC TWO video where Richard Cayeux demonstrates how to hybridise Irises.
A garden inspired by the arts and crafts movement wouldn’t be complete without irises. 
Often captured in the artwork of that period, it’s a flower that captured the heart of one French family over 120 years ago. Today Cayeux Irises regularly captivate visitors to Chelsea’s Great Pavilion, but it’s out in their 55 acre nursery that the family’s true love affair with the flower becomes apparent.
Big Hat tip to BBC TWO

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