FOREWORD 
Q UALITY GARDENS takes great pride and gratifi¬ 
cation in presenting herewith this list of superlative 
irises of 193b. 
With each season the selection of such a list becomes a 
matter of increasing difficulty because of the enormous 
number and amazingly high quality of new candidates for 
favor brought about by the progress of scientific methods 
among the hybridizers who now set their goals with definite 
purposes in view and seem to be accomplishing them with 
remarkable results. 
We are sending this catalog into the world to introduce 
our iris wares with the confident belief that it is the greatest 
list of irises ever gotten together. We do not believe that it 
can be excelled and there is not an iris in the list that is not 
of outstanding beauty and an ornament to any garden. We 
do not pretend to offer all the good irises. We do, however, 
offer the cream of them, selecting, where there are several 
very much alike among the new ones, the variety that seems 
most vigorous, free blooming and the best all around garden 
value. 
With each passing year we cannot too strongly emphasize 
the idea that the iris is a garden plant and it isn't anything 
else. There is no question that it has been damaged and its 
progress into gardens has been hampered by overstressing 
the iris as a show flower, a purpose for which it is poorly 
adapted. Making show or "florist's flowers” of plants has 
done incalculable harm in the past to some of our finest 
garden subjects. 
Another season rolls around unfolding the annual loveli¬ 
ness of the blooming cycle and of all the colorful glories that 
delight the senses, the iris, to thousands of gardeners, is the 
indispensable beauty of the garden moving picture. After 
living with the iris, first and last as a garden delight, and 
commercially with the rigors of stern competition, it can be 
said of this plant as of no other—sophistication never dulls 
the annual thrill of iris time. One never grows blase. 
Having been closely associated with the development of 
the iris from a lowly garden subject in the garden—in fact, 
an absentee from most gardens—the development of this 
plant seems to us to be the real miracle of modern horticul¬ 
ture. Perhaps this seems true because it has been before us 
so plainly and unmistakably and we have seen each year a 
new iris so definitely displace an old one that there can be 
no question about it. 
Sheer merit has driven out the old to bring in the new. 
Greatest of all, the dominant factor in this development, is 
the amazing range of color which has evolved from a narrowly 
limited scale pitched in dull tones. Size, amazing giants; 
height, shoulder high beauties have come, but the marvelous 
accomplishment is that of color, from dull to dazzling, from 
turbid and muddy to clear and crystalline, and an array of 
soft tones, blendings and shadings that no color chart can 
accurately describe so infinite is their variety. It is also 
miraculous that in all the thousands that have passed before 
us, no two are ever exactly alike. 
It is the garden plant, the hardiest of hardy perennials, 
that offers the greatest display of bloom in the most bewil¬ 
dering array of color, of any plant that we can grow. It 
requires practically no care once it is planted. 
And yet, with all its outstanding good points as a garden 
subject, the modern iris has made comparatively slow 
progress into the gardens of the country, a progress far 
behind the progress of the plant's development in beauty 
and garden usefulness. We have visited hundreds of fine 
gardens in the last two years, gardens of wealthy estates as 
well as humble backyard gardens, and to our amazement, 
we found that the small gardens usually had better irises 
than the great ones in some of which we found old timers 
that an up-to-date modern gardener would not give root 
room. 
When a millionaire tolerates Iris Honorabilis in his mag¬ 
nificent estate, there is something really wrong with his 
A Quality Gardens 
planting of Depute 
Nomblot, Blue Vel¬ 
vet, Grace Sturte- 
vant, Sir Michael, 
and in the distance, 
Spring Maid. . . 
One-year plants. 
K lit 
HSU! 
Irrj* 
4 Quality Gardens 
