Iris fields Schreiners Salem
— — ten days when the field becomes a window.
Not only on a wall.
“A working iris farm north of Salem, run by the same family since 1925. For two weeks in May the display garden opens beside the production fields and the colour fills the whole horizon: bearded iris in indigo, copper, pale lavender, and the dark plum the Schreiners are known for. The rest of the year the fields are quiet rows of green strap leaves. People come for the bloom, stay for the bread and coffee in the cutting garden, and drive home with a paper bag of rhizomes for autumn planting. from the studio
Iris fields Schreiners Salem, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Schreiner's Iris Gardens lies on the Willamette River floodplain a few miles north of Salem, in the Quinaby district near Keizer. The farm has been growing bearded iris on this ground since 1925, when F.X. Schreiner moved the operation from Minnesota in search of milder winters and the long, dry summer the Willamette Valley reliably gives. Four generations on, the family still owns and operates it. About 200 acres are in production at any time, with a ten-acre display garden that opens to the public for roughly the second and third weeks of May, when the bearded iris reach peak bloom in this part of Oregon.
The Schreiner family has bred bearded iris for nearly a century, and their introductions sit in private and public gardens worldwide. The cultivar Dusky Challenger, released in 1986 and still one of the best-selling iris ever introduced, was bred here. The display garden plants varieties in long colour blocks rather than mixed, so a single row reads as one wash of colour: a stripe of deep plum beside a stripe of butter yellow beside a stripe of pale lavender. The breeding rows behind the display hold seedlings still being evaluated, marked only with numbered tags.
Bearded iris in the Willamette Valley bloom on a tight calendar. The display garden typically opens around May 10 and closes by Memorial Day, with peak colour falling near May 18 in most years. Reblooming varieties send a second smaller flush in early autumn, but the May window is the one. Catalog orders ship as bare rhizomes in July and August for autumn planting, when the soil is still warm enough to root before dormancy. The garden charges a small admission during bloom season and grows quiet again by the first week of June.