Greetings from Hillcrest Gardens

Dear Iris Friends,

What a wonderful iris season was shared by us and our friends last year.  The winter was cold enough to give us the most fabulous median bloom season this past spring that had been experienced in North Texas in years.  Clumps of SDBs performed as never seen before.  As the bloom season progressed, the temperatures became very cool.  This gave us actually four distinct peak bloom periods for the medians, the tall bearded, spurias, and Louisianas.

The Iris Society of Dallas was host for the annual spring Louisiana mini-convention in mid-April.  We had many visitors though the Louisiana irises were just getting started because of unseasonably cool temperatures and cold rainy weather.  Our seedlings were well received at the mini-convention show.

We have resumed our median and aril-median breeding programs and have bunches of IBs lined out in the garden for future evaluation.

The tall bearded seedling crop was absolutely out of this world.  One of the stars in the patch was a magnificent flat- flowered  beauty from Got Milk X Winter Olympics.  The blue amoena,  and plicata seedlings were tops in the fields, as well as, several brown seedlings.  We really were not breeding for browns, but they sure popped up last year.  The bi-colored lines with Boogie Woogie in the background were stunning.

The Iris Society of Dallas was selected by the American Iris Society Board of Directors to host the 2013 American Iris Society National Convention.  Only Dallas could host the 2000 and 2013 National Conventions with both having the same dates in April.  Our garden will be one of the Master Plantings for the convention.  Our aunt and uncle, Max and Billie Clark , who have  the famous Clark Botanical Gardens at Mineral Wells, Texas,  will also host  one of the Master Plantings for the convention.

Our commercial endeavors last year were made up of mostly orders from Clubs.  We thank all of them for ordering iris from us.  You made last year one of the best sales years we have had in many years.  Final beardless and bearded 2011 Introduction selections will be made in April and posted on our website around May 15. HILLCRESTIRIS.COM

Austin City Blues and Bombay Eyes surprised many people by putting on outstanding rebloom  for many people last Autumn.  Both tend to bloom in late October through December here in Texas if we do not get hard freezes. 

Please contact us around April to see when peak bloom for the various classes of iris we grow will be projected.  The Mesquite, Texas large garden has over 5,000 irises there and we have over 1,000 new irises growing in the home (Bonnie’s) garden at 3365 Northaven Road here in Dallas.  Home Phone: 214-352-2191.

We hope all of you have an outstanding bloom season.  Hooker & Bonnie J Nichols