Iris Louisiana ‘Bold Pretender’

The Beautiful Solution for Wet, Boggy Garden Spots!

This native American water plant is found in ponds and alongside streams in the wild.

Bold Pretender is such a fine plant for the sunny to lightly shaded garden. It loves the wet, boggy soils that most other perennials avoid, and flowers heavily in early to midsummer, with radiant two-tone red blooms. Easy to care for, this native American plant is untroubled by most pests and diseases, adding beauty and grace to any setting.

With watermelon-red standards and darker red falls starred with a large yellow signal, Bold Pretender is magnificently colored. There is no such thing as a true red Iris, but this variety comes as close as any, and makes a fine contrast to all the blue and purple Irises elsewhere in the garden.

These large flowers begin in early summer and continue into the hottest weeks of the year on 36-inch plants. Lovely even in a small planting, they are best in great groups and drifts, and will spread gradually over time. Excellent for preventing erosion in ponds and along banks, they are also happy in the border, provided the soil stays quite moist.

Bold Pretender was bred by Morgan in 1983, and has become a classic among Iris lovers. Find a place for this beauty in your garden this season! Zones 3-9.