Hardy Plant Society

Look who is in our garden - Pacific Coast Irises

Californian or Pacific Coast Irises (PCI) are named for both people and places. I first discovered them when I was given Iris ‘Banbury Melody’ as a garden present shortly after I moved to Chandlers Ford in 1980. I have always loved irises but the large bearded irises I find are happier in their own sunny bed. However, for many years now I have grown the PCI’s with great success on my heavy clay but acid to neutral soil. I now have a number in the garden and would not be without them. As I write this article (26th April) they are all beginning to come into flower and will continue to do so until early June.

Lady Skelmersdale, of the Broadleigh Nursery, named nearly all her hybrids after family and friends. She always puts on a stunning exhibit for Chelsea.

The ‘Banbury’ pre-fix plants were bred by a Mrs. Marjorie Brummitt. She lived in Banbury and died in 1988 but has left a wonderful legacy of PCI’s. She was originally a flower arranger She started exhibiting her irises in 1951 and in 1972 she won the RHS Holford Medal for the best exhibit by an amateur. Her husband Leonard bred tall bearded irises and her other love was Siberians. Over the years Mrs. Brummitt won many awards, including 3 Dykes Medals, 8 Hugh Miller Trophies, 5 FCC’s and no less than 18 AMs. With both her and her husband’s skills in breeding irises they were candidates for the American Iris Society’s Hybridiser’s Medal and so in 1979 the medal was jointly awarded to them. This was a unique award. There are only a small number of her irises in commerce now but I am delighted to say that we have found Iris ‘Banbury Gem’ (see Sue Ward’s illustration on the front cover of this newsletter) happily growing in a member’s garden. This went out of the Plantfinder some years ago, and we are now busy growing plants through the Propagation Scheme. We have sent 3 plants to other HPS Groups and hope to be able to sell some plants at next year’s plant sale.

My favourites are:

• Iris ‘Banbury Beauty’ (1960) - Light lavender with a purple zone. This is a taller plant than average.
• Iris ‘Banbury Gem’ (1974) - a soft bronzy terracota colour rather like a lighter version of ‘Broadleigh Dorothy’.
• Iris ‘Banbury Melody’ - a dusky rose colour.
• Iris ‘Broadleigh ‘Amigita’ - blue mauve with a very dark flash and named for a friend of Lady Skelmersdale.
• Iris ‘Broadleigh Lavinia’ - pale peach with claret markings on the falls and named for Lady Skelmersdale’s sister-in-law.
• Iris ‘Broadleigh Dorothy’ - The catalogue says ‘Like an old Persian carpet in shades of bronzy red’. Dorothy was the foreman at Broadleigh Nursery.
• Iris ‘Broadleigh Peacock’ This is probably the best known and most easily available PCIris It is a green-tinged primrose yellow with bronze marking on the falls.
• Iris ‘Banbury Fair’ and Iris ‘Banbury Welcome’ are listed as having 1 supplier each in the current Plantfinder.

I am sure many of the others are still in gardens so do let us know if you find any.

For those of you who do not know the PCI’s they are about a foot high with narrow pointed, evergreen leaves.

They are very easy to grow once you get them through the first winter. Broadleigh’s plants are very small and I have found that when they arrive in the autumn the only way they survive till the spring is to pot them up and keep them in a cold frame or cold greenhouse. Once you have a reasonable sized plant to put into the garden they romp away and apart from splitting every two or three years they are very good natured. They should not be allowed to dry out in their first summer and prefer an acid soil but they do seem to be more tolerant of lime than first thought.

Click on drawing to open a larger image (in new window)

Text by Jennifer Harmer, drawing by Sue Ward.

These articles were originally published in the HPS Journal.