Your garden is amazing!

Beautiful irises! Which one you might ask? All of them!

My wish list is impossible to keep track of... Seriously, it's several pages long and growing.

More great pictures. I have a few of these, but still found about 6 to add to the wish list. Think I'll just plow up some of mine and get new ones, lol. I'm glad you like Ginger Ice, I like it a lot. I'm glad to see a nice pic of Show Your Colours, I got that one last year as a bonus, and have it planted in a bed near the house. Can't wait to see it up close and personal. Keep the pictures coming, the freezing rain, keeps me from doing anything outside, so I can look at pictures.

Grandma Johnston would be very proud that you love Iris as much as she did. Hello I am Brads Dad and keenly remember taking Brad his first Iris to his first home. It was Stepping Out from Schreiners Iris in Oregon. It was the first Iris my Grandma Johnston gave to me in 1975. I grew up amongst the iris in Winterset Iowa,home of The Bridges of Madison County.When I was 9 years old our large family always got togather on Sunday mornings in May to walk Grandmas Iris Garden and it was big to us.Grandpa Johnston would cook breakfast over an open firepit and the smell of fresh bloomed iris filled the air. It was among the best days of my life being with my cousins on those mornings and unknowingly being exposed to the Iris Bug. I am the only family member of all those cousins who were there on those Sunday mornings to have had the seed for love of Iris planted deep in my soul. Every year when I go out to my Iris bed as I have for 38 years and lean over to inhale the fragrance of my first bloom which is usually "Change Of Pace" I am 9 again and I am with my family again on those Sunday Mornings so long ago. To tend the beds is like tending family to me. I am thankful for Brad and that he has taken the seeds of another generation and is carrying them forward. I am in awe of his Iris Burms that I am blessed to see every year. The size of his bloom beds dwarf mine now and he has Iris from every major grower in this beds. We have flown to Oregon and California and personally met and talked Iris with Ray Schreiner, Paul Black and Tom Johnson, Keith Keppel and Joe Ghio in California. These are the heavy weights of the Iris breeding kingdom. I wish I could have taken Grandma Johnston with us but she passed on in 1978 and so Brad and I carry the torch for her now and gladly so. I have been blessed. Hers wishing all of you a great bloom season 2014. I'll see you in the Iris bed. Michael Collins

Hi Michael, so glad to have you share that beautiful story! You must be proud of your son's accomplishments, and some yet to be seen new creations that he's making in crossing some new irises. Not everyone catches the "gardening bug", it takes the nurturing of a caring and loving parent or grand parent to pass that tourch. You can be proud that you have done a good job with your son. I was lucky enough to visit Brad's garden last spring, and I was to blown away by the beauty. Now you will have to share some pics of your garden!

I also am the only one of my grandmother's descendents who is carrying on her love of flowers. She inherited it from her mother, and I was fortunate to have had the pleasure of my great-grandmother's company until I was 9; I vividly remember the Iris in her garden, too. Think I have a photograph of my great-grandparents with two of my cousins taken out back in about 1963 with blooming Iris in the background. Have to go find it. While my yard is very small, there are still sections available for new plantings and Iris will be taking the forefront in priority.

Hello Michael! I'm so glad you joined us, and shared the story of how Brad came to love Irises. We each have our own *story* of how we came to this appreciation (we call it Iris Addiction here). Yours and your son's are wonderful.

Thank you Michael. We share a lot of the same reasons we love iris. Not only are they an especially beautiful plant but they are rooted deeply in our past and family. I have wondered why some children form a special relation with irises while others think they are just Granny's pretty flowers. Perhaps it is magic.....iris magic. Whatever it is, I am glad Mama passed it on to me. smiles

What a nice surprise to find this and I'm glad you decided to join the group Dad. He has a awesome collection and beautiful garden and always beats me to the 1st bloom of the season with that Change Of Pace but maybe this year I will have something new that surprises us both. I am actively trying to introduce the gardening bug to my girls much in the same way Dad did for me, they help me go through the catalogs and help pick out there new favorites every spring and this year, I caught one of them with her nose buried in the Iris looking for the one that smelled the best every spring now they are starting to help out more and more I keep trying to convince them that pulling the weeds isn't so bad I am hoping soon they will want to have there own little beds to plant in and take care of that's when it gets really neat with the goal to be able to pass it on to them and continue this through our family. Thank You all for the wonderful stories and comments and I hope I helped add a few plants of mine to your wish list this spring.

I thought tonight I would share a few more pictures of Iris and then some of my gardens in bloom it gives the flowers a different look when you see them all mixed together. The kids and I are heading to the Ocean in the morning it is time for Vacation and I can't wait will share some seedling pictures in a couple weeks when we get back..

Star Appeal & Hi There Gorgeous


Temple Spirit & Cafe D Amour


Hopeless Romantic & Rum & Coke


Pep Rally & Classicana


Spice Trader & Magic By Gosh


Up In Flames & Chenille


Magnanimous & Sweet Geisha


Drifting Bubbles & Ledgermain


Pure Romance & Regal Knave



Random Garden Pictures

Love those garden shots! Have fun in the water! It should be a nice break from this weather for your family.

The random garden pictures are priceless. They tell a story of your wonderful irises that no single photo of an iris can tell. They are enchanting! I could be a homeless person in your garden and just walk barefoot in the soil and smell the iris and bask in the sunshine! LOL!

Nice 4 year old clumps of my old time favorites Mary Francis, Dusky Challenger and Celebration Song along my front driveway. I think the entire neighborhood waits for my iris to bloom. Is is a sight to behold and a blessing to all who walk or drive by.

I just don't know how an individual person can create and maintain such a wonderland. It rivals the professional gardens of Schreiner's, etc.

Well -- that's two of *us* on the coast. Have a safe trip and a great time, Brad. See ya on the flip side!

Got pictures, Michael?

Another photo down the driveway with Dynamite one of my favorite reds in front.

All About Spring is one of my favorites. I have it paired with Dynamite in the bed. This one is getting to be hard to find. I think it is a Kerr Iris.

OK -- this is wierd. Michael's first post (Mary Frances, Dusky Challenger, Celebration Song) first came through for me with no picture. When I came back the second time, the picture was there. As well as the photo of Dynamite.

But the post of All About Spring has no photo.

Strange goings-on this morning..............

Beautiful Iris, pilot4. I am one of the 'drive by starers' during iris season. I also have a lot of visitors to my modest garden. I have actually met people at a garden talk event for the first time and they come up to me and tell me they visited my garden one day and just sat in my swing and enjoyed it. I was not home at the time but that did not seem to matter. LOL Now if I can just get them to pull weeds.

Bonnie -- how nice of you to provide a swing for visitors to rest and enjoy your little slice of heaven!!

Omigosh -- and now Michael's picture of All About Spring is there. This is crazy!!!

You have heard of "The Ghost in the Machine", haven't you, MaryAnn ? He must be in YOUR machine today !...Arlyn