Gardeners’ activist is the only phrase that really fit when I was trying to describe Carolyn Melf to someone else recently. I first met Carolyn when she slipped me a business card during a local rose society meeting. It was not her card, but rather someone else’s card on the back of which she had written her name and phone number and the fact that she had a “fabulous” Iris garden in Paradise. “I am infected with the Iris virus!” she had written. A few days later when I was reading through a recent edition of “insideout” magazine, I saw two article written by Melf . A few days after that, I went out to Paradise to see Iris Spring – her home garden featuring more than 650 different varieties of Iris, which was fabulous and in full bloom the day of my visit. Carolyn and I had had a good long gardener’s chat as we walked among her beloved Iris (and peonies and roses and azaleas), and that very day she sent me an email letting me know that she was also a member of the Paradise Garden Club and that she would love to have me attend the upcoming regular meeting that would feature a daylily grower as the speaker, and “Was I interested in the upcoming annual Paradise Garden Tour?” Finally, I noticed at the end of her article on fuschia in InSideOut magazine that her credit mentioned she had founded a group called the Potting Ladies. Photo above: looking across a blooming Iris Spring Garden.

Whoa. And I thought I was an avid gardener.

Carolyn Melf is a happy ball of fire about anything to do with gardening – the fire getting even more heated when the subject of deer in Paradise comes up. A retired academic advisor from the California State University Chico’s College of Business, Carolyn says she had an appointment with a new or continuing student about their transfer courses, current course choices or their future careers every twenty minutes of every day. No wonder retirement left her with energy to spare. Photo above shows Carolyn and good friend Dolores, also an avid iris collector and grower.

Carolyn and her husband have been building their garden in Paradise for the past 30 years. At first, they fought an uphill battled against the persistent deer. But on a hot August day of that first year in the garden, she purchased a whole load of iris rhizomes at an Iris Society sale in the Kmart parking lot because the sign said that deer would not eat them. Carolyn found her garden’s niche. Well, its first niche. With the beautiful bloom of those iris the next spring, Carolyn was irreversibly infected with the Iris Virus. Since that time her home garden has been named Iris Spring, which is sort of a play on both her love of spring blooming iris and the year-round spring-fed creek that decoratively divides the garden into two parts.

Carolyn adds iris to her collection almost every year. She orders from other small growers and hybridizers, from catalogues and nurseries. She currently has 650 different varieties in bloom from early March to early June. The rhizomes are drought tolerant, they need a minimum of a half-day of sun and to be fed with a tomato fertilizer in spring, and they need to be divided every 3 to 4 years to keep good consistent bloom. Thus the birth of the Iris Spring sales form: while Iris Spring is open for visitors from 10:00 – 4:00 Thursday through Sunday during the bloom period, it is also open for sales of the dormant rhizomes in late summer and early fall. “Most people come to see the iris in bloom and then order their plants right then, after having seen them in bloom. I call them when their plants are ready as I divide the rhizomes in July and August,” explains Carolyn. “I had to divide them anyway, and one day early on a man stopped and asked me if I would sell him a division of every iris I had. I thought: why didn’t I think of that sooner?” The iris sales help to support Carolyn’s iris habit and she is considering broadening her specific addictions to include peonies as well as iris.

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Hurray Hurray the first of May - When I was a child, my mother (of British persuasion) would sing this bawdy rhyme on the first of May. And Bawdy is a very good description of the garden right now – all decked out in blossoms of extravagant colors and scents trying to attract pollinators so that it and we can move on into the fullness of summer and towards the possibility of fall harvests. The birds and bugs, flowers and weather are exuberant. Even with some cold fronts moving across the high country and bringing late, spring snows, it feels easier than winter rain and snow.

You can understand why May celebrations around the world and throughout time are centered around the riotous abundance of this time of year, with music and dancing and many, many flowers representing the obscene riches. May-poles and maybaskets, spring lettuces, asparagus and strawberries, fill gardens and markets; poppies, roses, lemon blossoms and mock orange branches scent the very air around us. Photo Below: Carolyn Melf’s exuberant Iris Spring garden, in Paradise. Iris Spring boasts 650 different varieties of iris, which are in bloom now and open to the public to see from now until May 25th or so. Iris viewed now can be ordered or purchased now mid-June pick-up. Besides iris, the garden has a lovely display of azaleas, dogwood, peonies and roses just now. For more information on how to get there call 872-7771.

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On Saturday May 3rd, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Chico will host its 25th annual Chico Garden Tour. Twenty-five years of preparing for and producing a garden party extraordinaire is no mean feat. I met with Becky Thompson last week to go over the history of the tour and the inspiration behind it. Later, Carol Sprague, an early and consistent St. John’s parishioner, Garden Tour Committee Member and tour volunteer recorded the show segment with me in the studio. Ultimately, what is made clear by both women is the deep loyalty that St. John’s parishioners have to the tour, and how much of a “parish-family” effort the tour is.

Becky Thompson has been on the Garden Tour Committee since 1985, when one of her friends brought her skill and enthusiasm into the fledgling idea. Thompson notes wryly that she has subsequently been the Garden Tour Chairperson since 1996. And while she has been in personal attendance on every tour heretofore, this year she had to choose between the tour and her son’s graduation from college. You will all be glad to know that she chose her son’s graduation, and that the other men, women and children of St. John’s will be holding down the fort without her on May 3rd.

“The tour started as a group of women who liked to garden, inviting each other over for an early summer tea party in their gardens. It evolved into a garden party for the parish and in time to the public Garden Tour that we know today. Each year we get between 850 – 1000 ticket holders. It’s amazing - and requires the entire parish of St. John’s to come together and work very hard.” Thompson goes on to laughingly tell me that when the church motto reads: to pray and work together, they are not exaggerating. All of the St. John’s youth groups are involved in the effort, often earning a portion of the tour proceeds to go toward their own endeavors, such as charitable trips to other areas of the world. And by the day of the tour each year - there is hardly a parishioner who has not helped in some way.

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