Attention seekers

WANDERING around the garden this week and seeing the tatty, browning and slug-ravaged foliage of the bearded irises, it is difficult to remember how thrilling they were only a few short months ago.

- John Hoyland

The heatwave of last summer had baked the plants’ rhizomes, so that May and June of this year saw a dazzling display of iris flowers.

Irises have always had a strong presence at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (they start to flower naturally in May, so growers don’t have to artificially force or hold back their plants). This year, they drew particular attention in the garden designed by Sarah Price, which was many people’s favourite show garden. The beautifully composed space was inspired by the artist and plant breeder Cedric Morris and displayed the irises he raised at his Suffolk home, Benton End, mostly in muted colours and often with speckled petals. Morris selected irises that had, in his words, ‘elegance and delicacy’.

For decades, the Benton irises, with their short season, single flowering, muted colours and lack of scent were considered inferior to modern hybrids. Now, however, fashion and their fortunes have changed, and they are this year’s must-have plants. Yet, in my garden, it is still the boisterous forms that will continue to find a home. Much as I admire both Morris’s irises, and his beautiful paintings of them, I prefer my irises to be as voluptuous as those painted by Georgia O’Keeffe and as generous as those of van Gogh.