Iris Swap

September is the right time to divide and plant bulbs that are getting overcrowded. Today’s post comes from a fellow garden blogger, Farmer Char. I saw her post about an Iris Swap she was organizing in a freecycle group. I thought, “What a fantastic way to build your garden, without spending any money, while dividing your bulbs to keep them looking beautiful!”

Many years ago my family took a trip to the Philadelphia Flower Festival. If you have never been, I highly recommend it. The convention center is filled with the most beautiful flowers and arrangements I have ever seen. There is inspiration all around.

My youngest daughter wanted to purchase one of the beautiful flowers and we let her pick one out. She chose a gorgeous bearded Iris rhizome in a lovely shade of blue. We enjoyed the rest of the show and then headed home.

The next day we planted that Iris in my daughter’s garden patch. In the early days of our garden, each of our family members had their own garden patch and my youngest daughter's patch was primarily flowers. So we put the Iris next to the Lilies and waited.

Many years have passed since we planted that very first rhizome in our garden and she has multiplied. First we split her up and put her throughout our yard. We took down a line of trees and added a gorgeous line of iris. We lost another tree in a storm and replaced it with a pleasant patch of Iris out front. We have even brought her to our friends and family members. This Iris is literally all over New Jersey now.

Photo: Terry Tunkel

This spring while I was out in my garden, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be lovely to add some different colors to our Iris patch. Now I love our beautiful blue Iris, but our yard is now a sea of blue and could really use a few pops of color. Gardening can be an expensive hobby, so I was looking for a different way to add some color. Then it occurred to me, there must be other folks out there like me, who have a sea of the same color Iris. The seed was planted and I had a wonderful idea, how about an Iris Swap?

I posted the idea that morning on Facebook, mostly to see if anyone else would be interested. To my surprise, there was a whole bunch of folks who would like to swap some Iris. After chatting with my neighbors for a couple of weeks, we threw together a quick event. It was a smashing success! Everyone enjoyed themselves. We all got new color Iris, and we all agreed to do the Iris Swap again.