We purchased and moved our young family to Tijara in 1979. In the beginning we had an almost-built house, a couple of farm sheds and an inadequate boundary fence. So, the next dozen years were spent completing projects and developing the farm, and simply getting done just what had to be done with farming, and for the family, as well as keeping up with our full-time jobs.

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In 1984 we decided to indulge in one of our life long passions – gardening - and just as in the beginning there wasn’t any of that there either. After surveying the scene for some considerable time, all we had to start with was a very large paddock with a large selection of weeds, lots of rocks and a few huge boulders that for certain would have to become features, or something like that. We must not let this challenge get us down we said, it will be best to tackle just one thing at a time. Firstly, the ever-present threatening winds from the west, the south and the north: before you could blink the wind breaks were planted and on their way! The next stage called for more individuality, so we reverted to the norm – His and Hers Gardens. Len took one side of the house and Shirley claimed the other side (as well as a bit more of the mowed house paddock, when she eventually ran out of space).

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By 1994 Shirley decided that there was still a problem – there was too much paddock left and it had to be mowed on weekends with our push mower. If you happened to miss mowing for one week end, it could take up to six hours to do, so that just had to be fixed a bit. Next – enter our iris population.

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Now, as luck had it, somebody gave Shirley an old iris catalogue and she thought that they would look quite pretty in the garden, so she sent off an order and dug up a bit more of the mowed paddock to plant them in. Then 'just one more iris' quickly led to many more, and so on they went.

 

Well, it wasn’t long before visitors wanted to buy some of these beautiful flowering plants and so the Tijara Iris Garden became a business. Unsurprisingly, breeding some of our own Iris soon became a natural thing to do also, and we got on with that too. Now some twenty plus years down the track we have many of our iris world registered, with lots more in the pipeline.

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All Irises for sale on this site are bare rooted rhizomes, freshly dug, year-round and guaranteed to be true to colour and form given the right growing conditions.

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We hope you enjoy our irises as much as we have.

                                                                                                       Shirley and Len

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Please note: Tijara Irises cannot be shipped to Western Australia due to Quarantine restrictions, and we do not supply to customers residing in the Northern Territory as they will not flower without a good frost.

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