How to grow irises in Oregon: Willamette Valley’s experts share the luck of the iris
Posted May 07, 7:02 AM
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Dennis: A chance encounter way back in 1920 eventually led to the Willamette Valley becoming home to one of the top commercial growers in the U.S. of the plant sometimes referred to as “the poor man’s orchid.”
Some might call it a coincidence. Others synchronicity. I like to think of it instead as the luck of the iris.
Because, as a result of that chance meeting between F.X. Schreiner and John C. Wister, who had recently become president of the fledgling American Iris Society, and a subsequent move from Minnesota two decades later, Schreiner’s Iris Gardens has been thriving in Salem since 1947.