Rob’s Red from Anne Hatcher
When I was little, every spring my grandma and Aunt Ginny would give me a bouquet of iris to take to school for my teacher. I carried them on the bus, wrapped in a wet newspaper and saran wrap. I remember how good they smelled, and how much the teachers appreciated them. Grandma and Ginny loved iris, they collected them and had a huge long bed of them, 100′ long and 4′ wide. In bloom, those iris were show-stoppers.
One of the first perennials I planted in the garden here in Rye was an iris given to me by a friend, and over the years I’ve added to that first clump with gifts from other friends. Alana Thrower used to go the iris sale in Colorado Springs every years and nab a few fan for me–that’s what iris divisions are called, fans–and more recently Bob Nold gave me an heirloom iris that was collected by Lauren Springer Ogden from an old abandoned farmhouse in Nebraska. In the last couple of years C.A. Freeman and Anne Hatcher have given me some beautiful ones. I didn’t get all of the fans from Carol Ann planted in the garden last year, so I put them in pots and they bloomed in the cold frame! 
What makes these iris such perfect pass-along plants? They’re easy to grow, tolerate a wide range of soil conditions, and they divide easily, too. Not only do they divide easily, they demand to be divided every two or three years. When they get too crowded, they don’t bloom as well. Iris like a lot of rain just before they bloom in the spring, and then they can grow quite dry after that. Even in drought years the iris persist, although they don’t bloom the way they would with extra moisture in May.
People often ask when to divide the tall bearded iris and the traditional time is after they are done flowering for the year, yet I have moved them successfully when they’re in full bloom! If you divide and replant them by late July or early August, you might get some blooms next year, but the best blooms come on two year old clumps.
