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foresthillsirisgardens-blog · 6 years

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Bluebird Haven Iris Garden a labor of love

http://www.bluebirdhavenirisgarden.com/

http://www.bluebirdhavenirisgarden.com/siteV2/catalog.html

Driving on a South County country road hugged by spring-green fields, you near an ornate gate that has a sign: Bluebird Haven Iris Garden. Suddenly your car slows down as you hear a loud “Gasp!”

Startled, you quickly realize it was you — so you pull in through the gate to see whether all those glorious, gorgeous, eye-popping flowers that overwhelmed your senses can possibly be real.

And they are. For three or four fabulous weeks that affirm God’s appreciation for fine natural form accompanied by incredible depth of color and creativity, the iris bloom turns 3 acres of Mary and John Hess’ 10-acre spread into a color-blended blanket of beauty.

Asked whether she ever loses her excitement in waiting for springtime to unveil her garden’s gifts each year, Mary, 66, smiled widely and exclaimed, “Oh! Oh, I can hardly wait for the bloom each year!”

This from a woman who has been lovingly coaxing her iris to greater and greater displays for 25 years at the site along Fairplay Road at Dorado Canyon Road — and has cherished the flowers since 1967 when she acquired her first bulb.

“It is so cool, checking on each bloom in each row and saying to myself, ‘I know who you are,’ making sure of the discovery — and then moving on to the next one.”

Mary’s excitement is doubly remarkable in that except for the spring bloom, the Bluebird Haven Iris Garden is a lot of work.

A lot of work.

The care

Instead of spotting colorful iris waving in the springtime breeze, motorists cruising along the lovely country road in summertime months instead will spot occasional puffs of dust as Mary goes about her daily chores. In the long, hot days of summer she is busy showing the iris how much she cares by weeding, digging, re-planting and conducting the latest skirmishes in an ongoing battle with gophers and, more recently, ground squirrels that consider the iris rhizomes (bulbs) a grand meal.

“I wish that the public understood that when they kill off the predators — the coyotes, foxes and even hawks — that gives the gophers and ground squirrels too much room to become problems,” said Mary, who despite her profound love of flowers and other beautiful things should not be confused with being a pushover. “I take the gophers I kill and freeze them to give to Sierra Wildlife Rescue later, to feed to their animals.”

It takes a tough gal to tackle the land and turn it into a gorgeous garden. It also takes the support of a loving husband who despite the fact that he refuses to weed, has backed his wife in all other things “iris.”

Love at first sight

And Mary has loved the iris since she laid eyes on a batch at a relative’s house up in Oregon, shortly after she married John, with the couple making their home in El Dorado.

“We got married in 1967 and I dragged my poor husband up to Oregon to meet my relatives,” said Mary, eyes crinkling at the corners. “One of my relatives, I don’t remember who … I was admiring her iris and before I know it, she grabs a shovel and digs some up, sending me home with a bunch of rhizomes and an old iris catalog.”

It was the old catalog that did it, Mary confessed all these years later.

“That first year, I ordered $30 worth of rhizomes, then the next year I spent $60,” she recalled with a soft smile, sitting on a loveseat inside the softly lit living room of the Hesses’ stunner of a Victorian home on the iris farm. “Then it was $120, then $240 — my garden in El Dorado was so pretty I felt guilty about hogging all this beauty.

“So I had the gem and mineral society (of which the Hesses are members) come out and one of them said, ‘Have you ever considered selling your iris?’

“I figured, if I could sell them, then I wouldn’t have to dip into the household account anymore.”

And that worked for a while, until the day the couple found 15 cars parked in the driveway at their El Dorado home, all customers waiting to get to Mary’s magnificent iris.

“I told John, ‘We have to move.'”

John Hess is a civil engineer and at that time was working for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The move to South County

“He is such a good husband (for an iris lady), with his knowledge of dirt and soil, sun requirements,” smiled Mary. “Plus, he had lots of topographical maps.”

Even armed with such knowledge, though, it was pure happenstance that brought the Hesses to the Fair Play property where they would end up building a breathtakingly beautiful, two-toned blue Victorian mansion, the perfect complement to the Victorian-inspired iris plantation.

Blame it on the wine, Mary said with a laugh.

“We came out here for a wine festival, on a hot summer day,” recalled the iris lady. “We had been tasting wine all day; we were hot and tired — but as we were going home, we spotted a ‘for sale’ sign that was nearly covered in weeds. John said, ‘Want to look?’ and I lied and said, ‘Sure.'”

Mary said after the couple crawled and scraped their way through “really obnoxious weeds,” she finally stood on her husband’s shoulders so she could get a good look at the property near Dorado Canyon Road.

“The price was right,” she reflected 27 years later. “We had it bulldozed and cleared, cleaned up the slag piles left by someone we heard had come in and logged the place then left it a mess.”

Moving the flowers

Then the really tough part began, Mary said, as the daunting task of transferring her flowers from El Dorado to Fair Play began.

“It took us two years to transplant them all — including 70,000 daffodils.”

Today those daffodils join the more than 100,000 iris that unfurl their fabulous secrets each springtime, with the bloom beginning roughly the last week of April through the third week of May. Mary said her garden has 4,000 different varieties of iris, which might sound like a huge amount until one considers that there are 80,000 to 90,000 registered iris variations, she said.

“I learned that from the American Iris Society,” of which she is a member.

Of Mary’s 4,000 varieties, a great deal of them are “historic,” meaning they have been established and registered for at least 30 years.

Mary also is a member of the Historic Iris Preservation Society and is proud of the number of tried-and-true iris that grow at Bluebird Haven.

Special flowers

What Mary also has come to realize is that many of the iris in her gorgeous garden are extremely special, having come from the Camino acreage where world-renowned iris hybridizer Lloyd Austin had grown his special flowers. The first director of Placerville’s Institute of Forest Genetics in 1925, Austin’s achievements as a breeder of plants were widely recognized and applauded.

“A few years after Lloyd Austin died, his (widow) Grace had me come up and dig up some of his iris,” said Mary.

Then, when Grace had to leave the property known as Rainbow Iris Garden in Camino, Mary said she was summoned again to dig up any and all the rhizomes that she wished.

That was in the late 1960s, and Mary said, “I really didn’t realize at the time what I was getting.”

The offshoots of those long-ago iris are contained within the treasure trove of tangled roots that wind through the property at 6940 Fairplay Road today. And despite all her careful cultivating and attention to detail, the lineage and even the type of iris there are not all known to Mary Hess, much to her chagrin.

“I do a tremendous amount of computer work these days and as a result I have found that when you order a flower and people send you one — they are not always correct.”

Unknowns

Mary let her words sink in for a moment, then grimly confided, “There are 750 unknowns in my garden.”

(The tendency might be to chuckle, but don’t do it in front of Mary.)

“My reputation is that when you order a flower, it is right on,” she explained. “As a member of the American Iris Society, I started seeing some of them — their names — and thought, ‘That doesn’t look like my iris. That one doesn’t look like my iris, either.'”

It turns out that an iris, by any other name than its own, does not look as sweet — not to the serious grower of the gorgeous gals.

Although Mary spends much of her day doing research, poring through tens of thousands of iris images, she said she knows she will not be able to make her garden completely “pure.”

“I have been able to match up five or six a year, using the internet …” she said, her voice trailing off as her listeners did the math. It appears the 750 renegades will range freely at Bluebird Haven, never to be identified.

Unless they are dug up and tossed instead of being dug up and replanted.

“Ideally, the iris would be dug up and separated, redone every four years,” said Mary, wiping her hands on her britches after checking a gopher trap (empty). “I have 24 blocks (50 feet by 16 rows) and have gotten one or two blocks done a year, so you can see I am running behind.”

The iris are thinned out, separated and then re-planted, with Mary’s goal of keeping 10 of each variety for her own, to continue the preferred varieties.

Preserving the rare

“The stuff I have got is so rare,” she said. “I have been told that I have one of the highest number (of rare, historic iris) among not only commercial gardens but private as well.

“I want to preserve that genetic potential.”

And that takes a lot of work.

A typical day for Mary is up at 5:30 a.m. and outside turning on “the first water” by 6. “Every two hours I change water lines — it used to be every three, but that’s my concession to the drought.” Mary wraps up the watering about 6 or 8 in the evening.

“During the summer I am weeding, planting, digging up the iris, putting space between the rhizomes.”

Asked, “How’s your back?” Mary offered another grim smile and said, “No trouble with my back but I am having some hip trouble. I never thought I’d be one to complain — and I do find that the more I work, the better I feel.”

Those are strong words from the tough lady, but Mary said she has to admit that the years might be catching up, just a bit.

“I’m 66 — could be 67, I’m not sure — but my mom Dorothea worked outside and she was 94 when she came inside from working and ended up falling in the bathroom, breaking her ribs.

“She was never the same after that, but she made it past 95. My mom was my No. 1 weeder.”

Mary said these days she “follows the shade” as she works her garden and quits toiling in the summertime heat by mid- to late morning. “That’s because I had an episode not too long ago. I overheated and ended up in the ER.”

That’s when she retires into the cool and pleasant interior of the Victorian, where she goes to work on her computer, trying to identify — for certain — each of her beloved iris varieties.

A favorite

Her efforts have been fulfilling, especially when it came to one of her favorites, an iris called “Persian Smoke.”

“Persian Smoke is just a gorgeous, gorgeous flower,” Mary began her tale, pointing out on her computer the salmon-colored standards on the iris in question. (The “standards” are the frothy part of the flower that exuberantly burst from the top, while the petals that sweep downward are the “falls.” Other parts of the iris include the “tongue” or “beard,” with some having “horns,” little protuberances that are self-explanatory.)

“Well, I got an e-mail from a woman who said, ‘Your Persian Smoke is incorrect.'”

Those are fightin’ words in the world of the iris, according to Mary, who can set her computer to smokin’ with the best of them.

“I hate to sound like I’m bragging, but it turned out that I had it right,” said Mary, her smile rounding like the curve of a flower’s fall. “A guy from Australia ended up deciding the point and I had it right and everyone else had it wrong.”

The issue of the Persian Smoke was put to bed.

While Mary is eager and willing to talk about her beloved iris, she also indicated that by doing so, she had cut into her morning routine of tending to the little lovelies. When the team from the Mountain Democrat jokingly offered to help weed to make up for the lost time, Mary came uncomfortably close to accepting.

That’s because last March, the iron lady of the iris fell and broke her wrist pretty badly, leaving her “desperate to catch up.”

“I have fallen behind and I could use some help taking the weeds out, clipping back the foliage, cutting the iris back and clearing up the dead leaves,” said Mary, once again checking an empty gopher trap.

“My husband doesn’t weed,” she added. Her two children, Eric and Erin, also are long-grown and unable to pull garden duty.

“The interesting thing is, last spring was the best we’ve had here in four years, probably because of the rains,” she said. “The year before, on Mother’s Day, we probably didn’t have more than five or six visitors. But this year, it was great.”

Mary sells her iris by taking orders at the farm, where visitors are welcome to walk among the rows of insanely beautiful flowers, marveling at the colors, textures and shapes that set the imagination aflame. She also sells online, but the website for Bluebird Haven is being refurbished and likely won’t be up and running properly until the beginning of next year.

“The best thing to do is to e-mail me your wish list and I can let you know what’s available,” said Mary. “The sad thing is, I have 500 new varieties this year and no way to get them on the website.”

That means folks will just have to set aside a day or two to take a trip to South County in the springtime, pulling into the driveway that leads to the color-splashed hills where the iris await. Mary’s prices are reasonable but as you negotiate your purchase, remember one tip: If you don’t want Mary Hess to know just how much you covet her iris, try not to gasp.

Bluebird Haven Iris Garden may be reached at (530) 620-5017 or e-mail [email protected]. Mary Hess said she would welcome anyone, service clubs or individuals, wishing to volunteer to help in her garden.

https://www.mtdemocrat.com/prospecting/bluebird-haven-iris-garden-a-labor-of-love/

Bluebird Haven Iris Garden 6940 Fairplay Rd. Somerset, CA 95684 (530) 620-5017 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.bluebirdhavenirisgarden.com

Notes: Mary Hess has been selling historic iris for many years. She has a huge selection and is adding new ones all the time. Many hard to find cultivars, for which they are the only source. Email your request list to Mary.

http://www.bluebirdhavenirisgarden.com/

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