How BC Iris Society Helps Home Gardeners Choose and Grow Irises

BC Iris Society (bcirissociety.com) is a gardener-run educational site for anyone who wants to pick the right iris for a landscape and learn how it grows. It is most useful if you are gardening in British Columbia or a similar climate, want to browse named cultivars before buying, or are looking for a Canadian mail-order source. It is not a shop itself — the site points you toward growers rather than selling plants directly.

What the site actually gives you

The homepage describes the group as "enthusiastic gardeners dedicated to enlightening fellow gardeners about the different types of irises for enhancing all landscapes." In practice that means three things a home gardener can use:

• An iris gallery of named cultivars, each labelled with type, height, and bloom season
• Newsletters covering growing experience, garden stories, and seasonal updates
• A buying guide for iris in British Columbia

Reading the gallery: what the labels mean

The gallery entries follow a consistent pattern — cultivar name, iris class abbreviation, height in inches and centimetres, and bloom timing. That format is the most practical part of the site, because it lets you match a plant to a spot before you order it.

How to use this: if you want colour at the front of a border in early summer, a 12–16" SDB or AB fits. If you need height at the back, the 36–46" TBs are the candidates. Bloom timing tells you whether a cultivar extends your season or overlaps with what you already have.

The gallery also includes species and non-bearded types — Iris chrysographes (black form), Iris florentine, and Siberian irises such as Flying Fiddles, Humors of Whiskey, How Audacious, Dotted Line, Solar Energy, and Carnavalito. That matters if you are working with wet soil or a naturalistic planting rather than a sunny, sharply drained bed.

Where to buy iris in British Columbia

The site's buying page names Hillside Irises in Cawston, BC, described as growers of bearded iris shipping all over Canada with easy online ordering. That is the concrete starting point the site offers for Canadian gardeners who would otherwise be looking at US suppliers and cross-border shipping.

If you are outside Canada, treat this page as a model rather than a directory — the useful move is to search for a specialist grower in your own region and check the same things: which classes they carry, whether they ship to you, and whether their listed bloom times match your climate.

Newsletters: what you can read

The most recent newsletters are listed on the homepage, with an archive also available:

• From Print to Blog: Our New Format + Reticulata Iris Feature — covers the society's move from a print newsletter to a blog format, plus a feature on reticulate irises
• From Ukraine to BC: Iris Stories, Tributes, and Garden Highlights — iris stories and garden highlights with a tribute element
• Summer Iris Update & a Tribute to Bill Dumont — a seasonal growing update alongside a tribute

These are worth reading if you want local growing observations rather than generic plant-profile text. The reticulata feature in particular is relevant if you are interested in the small, early-blooming bulbous irises, which behave differently from bearded types.

Is it the right resource for you?

Use it if you garden in BC or a comparable climate, you want to see named cultivars with height and bloom data before buying, or you need a Canadian supplier lead.

Look elsewhere if you need a plant-shipping shop with a cart and live inventory, detailed cultivation instructions for a specific soil or pest problem, or a society local to your own region.

One practical note: the site has a checkout link, but the homepage content is educational and the buying page points to a third-party grower. Do not assume you are ordering from BC Iris Society itself — check the grower's own site for current availability, pricing, and shipping terms before you commit.