I wanted to share what happened at Dry Creek Garden last weekend. As you may recall, Dry Creek was the master planting at the 2019 AIS convention and was a spectacular showcase of iris. A person (or persons) somehow entered the bearded iris area (no fences, chains, or locks were disturbed). They stole most of the recent iris plantings, including the 2022 regional guest iris, Mt. Diablo Iris Society door prize iris, and numerous personal iris of Jeff Bennett, the garden manager. Jeff estimates that 500 varieties were taken (most without their name tags). A police report has been filed, but as you can imagine it will be difficult if not impossible to identify a culprit.
One of our regional members suggested I pass along information about this to a wider audience, both to alert people in more areas about the possible sale of large numbers of unnamed iris, and to get folks thinking about security for iris planted in public spaces. After a number of smaller break-ins and thefts of non-iris-related items, Dry Creek had installed a camera near the iris garden, but it did not record the theft, unfortunately. Dry Creek had been closed to the public during the pandemic, and almost as soon as they reopened in April they began to have break-ins and thefts.
I am devastated by this news, and I can only imagine what it must be like for Jeff, who has worked so hard for so many years to make the iris garden at Dry Creek such a special place. Having a conversation about security of iris planted for regional (or AIS) activities seems like a good thing to do at this point.
Sorry for the downer,
Jean
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