Iris: A True American Grown Flower

Did you know 95% of the iris bought by consumers in America is grown right here in the United States?

This is in contrast to most other flower crops where the vast majority come from off shore sources.  We just released a new film with Lane DeVries explaining how we are able to have year round iris production. Please have a quick view, it is just over two minutes long.(Here is a link if the below player doesn't work.)

We love growing iris at both our farm in Humboldt County and our farm in Oxnard. Sun Valley is known for growing the spectacular blue Telstar variety, but you may not be aware that we grow some other popular colors as well.

• Casa Blanca (White)
• Hong Kong, Purple City (Purple)
• Sky Diver (Light Blue)
• Nevada (Yellow)

As you hear more and more about the American Grown flower movement, make sure you think of elegant, magisterial iris. Iris are a true American grown beauty. Across time, iris have been the subject of many poems and works of art.

Here is one of our favorite pieces from a distinctly American Grown author, Mary McNeil Fenollosa, born in Alabama in 1865

IRIS FLOWERS
My mother let me go with her, (I had been good all day), To see the iris flowers that bloom In gardens far away. 
We walked and walked through hedges green, Through rice-fields empty still, To where we saw a garden gate Beneath the farthest hill.
She pointed out the rows of "flowers";— I saw no planted things, But white and purple butterflies Tied down with silken strings.
They strained and fluttered in the breeze, So eager to be free; I begged the man to let them go, But mother laughed at me.
She said that they could never rise, Like birds, to heaven so blue. But even mothers do not know Some things that children do.
That night, the flowers untied themselves And softly stole away, To fly in sunshine round my dreams Until the break of day.

-Mary McNeil Fenollosa (1865-1954)