A Year and a Day

ago I blipped this very plant. But for our trip to London it could have celebrated its own blipday!

Iris 'Katherine Hodgekin'.

In the early 1960s E. B. Anderson crossed two rare irises, I. wiogradowii and I. histriodes, collecting the pollen of the first and storing it in an empty jam jar until the second iris flowered. Most of the resulting seedlings would no doubt have been miserable plants, but one, which he named after the wife of fellow plant-enthusiast Eliot Hodgkin, was a treasure. Such a success is a combination of patience, good luck, hard work and knowing what you are doing. Most of all though, it needs the eye of an artist: Anderson knew that the progeny of these unassuming parents might well produce a plant of special beauty that would enchant gardeners for decades to come.