IMPORTANT! 
Your A rckitect 
can tell you about 
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Your Plumber 
can give you an 
estimate on Mott 
Plumbing Fix¬ 
tures installed 
complete. 
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The J. L. Mott Irox Works, Fifth Avenue and 17th Street, New York 
1828— Eighty-nine Years of Supremacy —1917 
tBoston 
Pittsburgh 
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Cleveland 
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Portland, Ore. 
tWashington, D. C. 
Columbia, S. C. 
tNew Orleans 
Denver 
^Showrooms equipped with model bathrooms 
tSan Francisco 
tSt. Louis 
tMontreal, Can. 
San Antonio 
Dallas, 
Los Angeles 
Ml T 1 1 I 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 II.LI. 
III I I.:: i~r 
1 1 1 V 1 curr 
rn 1 rn i .m m i m i i i i i it i i m i.i 
tAis 
ROOFING 
TIN- 
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Your Greenhouse Ready-cut! 
9 
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< 30 rdon » VanTine Co. 6308 Case Sheet 
Satisfaction Guaranteed or Honey Back Uavenporl, iOWa 
Flowers of the Rainbow Goddess 
{Continued from page 74) 
or rhizomes—which is characteristic 
of the members of the German strain 
—will do without a great amount of 
moisture and thrive in dry places as 
well as anywhere else; while the spe¬ 
cies having thinner and deeper grow¬ 
ing rhizomes need considerable water, 
some of them even demanding dis¬ 
tinctly moist places. 
Planting and Bloom Succession 
The first to flower usually is Iris 
pumila, the dwarf iris from Crimea, 
with deepest purple flowers, along 
with its varieties alba, which is 
white, and sulphurea, which is yel¬ 
low. Following this comes Iris in¬ 
terregna, in company with the Flor¬ 
entine iris and I. Sibirica. Close on 
the heels of these are the army of 
German irises, some earlier than 
others, yet none more than a few 
days apart. The Spanish strain 
comes into bloom in early June be¬ 
fore the German has done flowering, 
and following it the English sort 
starts in late in the month. Mean¬ 
time, the Japanese varieties have 
gotten under way, and these continue 
in flower after everything else has 
passed and gone — providing, of 
course, that their situation is con¬ 
genial and that they have had proper 
feeding and watering. 
All irises may be naturalized, for 
they are plants that lend themselves 
particularly to the careless abandon 
of Nature’s planting; indeed, they 
are never so well placed as when 
thus treated. That they should never 
go where their foliage will be cut 
is very certain, for their leaves are 
decorative and essential to their life. 
But naturalistic planting does not 
invariably imply scattering in grass! 
It means as often the grouping in 
the garden or against a shrubbery 
background, in opposition to bed¬ 
ding. And when I use the term in 
connection with iris, I mean this. 
Someone has said that irises are 
as easy to grow as potatoes, and 
having grown the latter in large 
quantities, I am prepared to say that 
they are—and more! Most irises are 
indeed much easier to grow than 
good potatoes, for they do not need 
cultivating, or spraying, or tending 
a bit in the world, once you get 
them in the right place and give 
them the food they like. It seems 
to be true, however, that there is no 
telling exactly the right place except 
by trying. I have had iris clumps 
grow and thrive where I knew be¬ 
forehand they could not possibly 
live! And I have had other clumps 
pine aw’ay and vanish right from 
under my nose in places that, accord¬ 
ing to all theory, were ideal. 
The bulbous irises, to which class 
the English and Spanish species be¬ 
long, like a somewhat sandy soil, 
free from manure, to which they are 
very sensitive. It is to their advan¬ 
tage that they should be rather dry 
during the stjmmer; and of course, 
like all the rest of the family, they 
should have free sunlight. The bulbs 
are usually supplied by dealers in 
the autumn, and should be planted 
as earl}- as possible, if bloom the fol¬ 
lowing spring is to follow, for the 
roots should be formed before win¬ 
ter sets in. A mulch of leaves such 
as is used over any other fall planted 
bulb ought to cover them. 
Wherever you plant them, if they 
do not show a distinct gain in their 
second season, make up your mind 
something is wrong, and move them 
elsewhere. These species increase 
rapidly by offsets wdien all is well 
with them, and need to be divided 
frequently. It is best, by the way, 
when dividing any iris clump, to do 
so by simply cutting it in two where 
it stands in the ground, and remov¬ 
ing one portion of it. Then throw 
earth into the hole thus left beside 
the rest, which will go on growing 
without a setback. Irises do not like 
being disturbed, although they do 
need to be divided fairly often, 
owing to their habit of growing from 
underneath the rootstock, as w'ell as 
all around it. A clump left too long 
without dividing will thus become a 
circle of leaves instead of a clump; 
and the middle will be a mass of 
grasses and weeds that will have 
taken root between the old and worn- 
out portions of the rhizome. 
Depth and Care 
Plant the roots of the bulbous iris 
3" to 4" deep, and if your soil is 
at all heavy, give each one a little 
bed of sand to lie in. Plant the 
rhizomes of the Germanica and allied 
sections flat—parallel with the sur¬ 
face of the ground—and do not put 
them deep. Indeed, some leave half 
of the rhizomes exposed; and as this 
is the way they grow naturally it is 
the logical thing to do. The best 
time for handling all these thick 
rhizomes is right after they have 
stopped blooming and before they 
start in with their new growth. For 
this reason, fall is not a good time; 
for fall-planted rhizomes do not get 
a sufficient start before winter to be 
able to produce flowers in the spring. 
Dormant rhizomes should never be 
given much moisture until they have 
begun to grow, for until they have 
made roots and are thus able to use 
water, it simply lies around and is 
liable to rot them. This is the one 
point about handling them that should 
be particularly noted. 
To secure the best results with the 
Japanese iris, plant them well under, 
water them frequently and thor¬ 
oughly—until the water penetrates to 
a real depth—with manure water; 
or, if this is not available, wdth plain 
water, dressing the ground with well- 
rotted manure. Probably no other 
species is so susceptible to care or 
the lack of it, and no other species 
will repay care so abundantly. But, 
as the roots of those plants not infre¬ 
quently reach to a depth of 2' in 
their eager hunt for moisture, it is 
evident that a little top sprinkling 
will not do much good. 
