Iris germanica Don't Stop Believing - Tall Bearded Iris

Iris ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ is a late-flowering, tall, and fragrant pink variety, award-winning in the United States for its garden performance. It beautifully concludes the season of tall bearded irises. Its long, well-branched stems bear several buds that bloom successively. Its colour is in a pastel range, but the flower is very well-shaped: it is wide, highly undulate, finely crimped, adorned with lovely mandarin beards with bluish lilac tips.

The tall garden irises or Iris germanica are bearded irises resulting from a long process of selection from rhizomatous irises. Iris × germanica refers to a natural hybrid between two European species, Iris pallida and I. variegata. Breeders have worked to obtain taller plants, larger flowers, more undulate petals, coloured beards, and better-branched stems.

This variety ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ reaches about 1.07 m in height when in flower. Its flowering occurs at the end of the tall bearded iris season, most often in June. The stems are robust and can bear up to 9 buds; the flowers do not all open at once, allowing the clump to remain decorative for longer. Each flower combines 3 upright petals of light pink with 3 wide horizontal sepals of milky white. The base and edge of the sepals take up the pink of the petals. Their edge is strongly undulate and crimped. The most singular detail lies in the beards: they are mandarin or salmon-coloured in the centre, but bluish lilac towards the tip. This small cool touch is clearly visible when observing the flower up close, for example to inhale its sweet fragrance.

'Don’t Stop Believing’ was bred in the United States by Thomas Johnson. It was registered in 2013 under seedling number TA80A, then introduced the same year by Mid-America Garden. Its parentage includes ‘Ballet Royale’, ‘Corps de Ballet’ and ‘Secret Affair’. This variety received an Honorable Mention from the American Iris Society in 2015, then an Award of Merit in 2017. It subsequently obtained the John C. Wister Medal in 2021, an award reserved for the best tall bearded irises.

Since iris ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ is tall and late-flowering, plant it in a large sunny border, leaving enough space around its rhizomes so that they remain in the sun. Plant it in groups of 3 rhizomes spaced 40 cm apart; the clump will be more generous after two or three years. You can alternate it with the blue variety ‘Friendly Seas’ and the white ‘Lark Ascending’. In the background, add a few small sun-loving shrubs, such as Salvia microphylla ‘Blue Note’ and Salvia greggii ‘Alba’.