Bobbie Mason is living proof that if you want to get something done, you should assign it to a person who is already busy. Previewing her garden days before a double feature of tours for the American Iris Society and, about a week later, the Society for Louisiana Irises, Mason described some of her gardening projects.
There’s the wheelchair-accessible therapy garden for veterans. The flower beds at the town square in Red Oak, where she lives. Her participation in flower shows. Her active membership in gardening-centered organizations, from the Dallas Council of Garden Clubs to the National Garden Club, and her leadership roles in several of them. Not only is she District X director for Texas Garden Clubs, she’s also historian for the Oak Cliff Garden Forum and incoming president of the Ovilla Garden Club.
That’s not a comprehensive list, by the way.
The energy she has put into her own garden is considerable, and that doesn’t count husband Robert’s sweat equity. (He weeds the many beds.) Repurposed containers — “something from nothing,” as she puts it — hold most of her Louisiana irises and other plants.
“My husband just gave up this pair of boots. And so they immediately had to become a flowerpot,” she says of footwear that’s now filled with sedum.
Patriotic by nature, Mason has a towering trio of plants in shades of red, white and blue. The white is a native Texas passion vine. It was a 6-inch stick in a gallon bucket at a Texas Discovery Gardens plant sale that she paid $15 for, although “I’m really allergic to spending money on plants,” she says. “I like to trade too much.”
Perhaps Mason’s original trade was at the tender age of 3, when she asked her great-grandmother in Christoval for some of the flags in her yard. (Some varieties of iris are known as flags.) Her great-grandmother said: “Honey, you can have all those old things you want. I’m sick of them.”
“My mother was not happy because I tore up her grandmother’s iris beds,” Mason says. When the misunderstanding was cleared up, “in the pickup they went.” Those irises “followed me around all my married life, and I’m 65 now. So that’s 62 years I’ve been dragging William Setchell” iris bulbs.
Mason joined the Dallas Iris Society in 2000, and now hybridizers send her their new varieties to show off. They get a good ride since she hosts many iris tours.
In all, Mason has found homes on her property for 150 new Louisiana irises “to go with the 50 I already have.” All of this is on a three-fourths-acre lot. “We have 10 pounds of flour in a 5-pound sack.”
A lovely sack it is, too.
Tips for growing irises
Avid iris gardeners have been known to throw surplus iris bulbs over the fence and have them bloom as heartily as their cared-for neighbors. We’re talking Louisiana iris, especially. We’re talking tough.
Sure, there are guidelines for Louisiana and their bearded relations:
1. Planting depth depends on the type of soil. For clay, go shallow. For sandy soil, plant deeper.
2. Irises like about a half-day of sun.
3. Plant at least 12 to 16 inches apart.
4. Fertilize on Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day and Halloween, advises Bobbie Mason. Use a 5-10-5 fertilizer. Tall bearded irises like dry conditions. Louisianas like acid soil and moist conditions. (Louisiana irises love water gardens.) You should use fertilizer designed for acid-lovers on Louisianas. Try azalea or camellia food, Ironite and Epsom salts — but not alfalfa — for Louisiana iris.
5. With any luck (and it doesn’t take much), you’ll need to divide iris in a couple of years. Divide the rhizomes between sections.
Betsy Simnacher is a Cedar Hill freelance writer.
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