Caring The property, which is the inspiration for the garden, has been in Ed’s family since 1857 when his great-grandfather paid Placer County $10 to allow him to settle there and later applied for homestead status for the 240 acres. He raised cattle and mined for gold. In the early 1900s, the family planted fruit orchards and built a shed where they packed grapes, pears, plums and peaches. The land and the farmhouse sat abandoned for many years until Ed began renovating the house in the 1980s. In 1990, he and Mary Annmarried and began the formidable task of clearing the overgrown blackberries and weeds.
Irises are tough, resilient plants that don’t ask for much more than plenty of sun. Seven hours a day minimum keeps them happy and blooming. The rhizomes like to rest slightly in the ground with their tops exposed to the sun. When planting, dig out the soil just a tad, lay the rhizome in the depression and press the soil firmly around the sides of the rhizomes. Give them some water. Keep the plants damp but not soggy until they are established. Once the winter rains begin, stop watering and let Mother Nature do the job. Rule of thumb, Mary Ann Horton says, is it’s always better to underwater than to overwater. Fertilize twice a year (she recommends Valentine’s Day and in the fall) with a balanced fertilizer: 10-10-10 or 15-15-15.
“When I moved in, the Johnson grass along the sides of the driveway was so high it got caught on the mirrors of my car,” Mary Ann recalled. “Ed bought me a riding lawnmower. The grass was higher than the lawnmower.” Life-changing discovery During the cleaning-up process,Mary Ann discovered clumps of old-fashioned irises, as well as beautiful rock outcroppings among the weeds. She created flower beds around the rocks and soon began collecting new and old iris varieties. She visited old farmhouses in the area to look for irises and collected many varieties that would otherwise be lost to cultivation. Some she was able to identify, while the names of others are lost forever. She kept planting and buying irises. Ed jokes that his “Grandma Pearl carried away as many rocks and boulders as she could, but Mary Ann has carried them back, plus more.” Mary Ann knew little about irises when she started and certainly had no inkling that finding those irises in the weeds would change her life. “My mother had a long row of irises planted when I was growing up,” she said. “We didn’t know the names of any of them, but I remember how beautiful they were in bloom.” The garden grew and grew, and it wasn’t long beforeMary Ann opened the garden to friends and visitors. Along the way, she became a certified iris judge and now trains others to judge irises. The rest, she says, is history.
24
March/April 2022
Powered by FlippingBook