Walled Garden Volunteers' Blog May 2025
/It’s May - it’s Chelsea Garden Show - and it’s time to Bring on the Irises!
We have some stunning irises in our collection at the Walled Garden nowadays –and they are putting on quite a show!
Catch them in the next week or so, as their beauty is not long-lasting.
So – Why Irises? And how did we come to have such a fabulous display every May in the Walled Garden?
By late 2015, the hard landscaping in the project to bring the abandoned Walled Garden back to life was completed, and the contactors left site.
And then, we looked at the six borders between the winding pathways. Empty. A blank canvas.
Local ceramics artist, Cleo Mussi, long-time supporter of the Museum, stepped forward with ideas, and at that point, the Mediterranean, White, Bobbly, Purple, and Bonkers Borders were born. The Borders were to be created on the theme of colour, with the aim of achieving all-year-round interest.
We had little money, and asked friends for plant donations. Along with others, Cleo brought in plants she had potted up at home – and amongst the first to go in, were purple irises from her garden.
Cleo is pictured, on March 7th 2016…with the irises newly planted in the Mediterranean Border- and that Border now.
Our planting plans did not include more irises, though Cleo did have a few others, some from friends, and we popped those into appropriate spots in our colour-coded flower beds.
First flowering!
We were so thrilled when they flowered!
During the following years, our iris collection expanded. All gardeners know that the best way to ensure a favourite plant continues to thrive in the garden, is to share a cutting or two with friends (in case you lose your original) - which is exactly what happened next. Through Cleo, we were invited to pick up some iris rhizomes from a friend, a (famous) landscape gardener, as he was splitting his, so by autumn 2016 we had more to add to the Garden.
The following year, more irises arrived, this time a donation from the Newnham College Garden at Cambridge University. Professors came to Stroud to meet the Museum Trustee, the late Dame Margaret Weston, awarding her the honour of becoming a Fellow of the College. They discovered our Walled Garden project…and two weeks later, a gardener arrived with a van, with some 30 or so more irises!
Dame Margaret is pictured viewing ‘her’ irises in full flower one May afternoon in 2019.
This was all very exciting! But we had a lot to learn. Irises only flower for four weeks, from mid-May, and one iris looks much like another for 48 weeks of the year. Therein lay our problem. It is very easy for a label to be moved accidentally… and rhizomes, which all look the same, to be put in the wrong row.
And even when in flower it is a challenge to identify exactly which iris is which!
We have tried very hard. When we accepted the offer of some Benton irises, we went to collect them armed with sticky labels, tie-on labels, string, bags, marking pens, extra pens and notebooks – much to the amusement (and approval) of the landscape gardener!
We have aimed to place each iris, named, into the correct colour-themed border, and we’ve written planting plans and lists. Mostly we have had success. Sometimes, inexplicably, though, the labels disappear… or an iris decides not to flower this year!
There is no space to create a dedicated Iris Border, as in some gardens, to display all the irises together. We have stuck to our colour plan instead, so you will see ours incorporated into the borders.
And so, we’ve added an extra complication, that of having irises in mixed borders…if possible, we must not let the irises become over-shadowed, as the rhizomes love sunshine!
However, we think we are not doing too badly, overall. We are so lucky to have such fabulous blooms. Come and see for yourselves...but don’t wait too long!
This blog was inspired by a visit to see our irises from the West and Midlands Iris Group.
