no intention of getting back into irises but found a
clump of pink iris growing at her new home. It was
later identified as ‘Vanity’ (Hager 1975, TB). Her
daughter, Aurelie Carpenter, is a gardener and so
they went to the local iris club’s show, which piqued
her interest in iris again. She eventually became
president of the Carolina Mountains Iris Society. She
grew TBs, Siberians and Japanese irises. In the early
2000s she received a bonus rhizome tagged AB,
‘Burra Sahib’ (Hager 1989, OGB), fell in love with it
and other arilbreds almost exclusively and became a
director of the Aril Society International.
Betsy now lives in Mills River, NC, more rural and
mountainous with the property heavily wooded.
Sun there is in short supply, old age has creeped up
and so irises and gardening are no longer a major
activity in her life. However, the reason for this
DSM is her tremendous performance in helping
manage the Iris Encyclopedia (wiki). She has been
the primary person in creating new cultivar pages.
Since there are approximately 70,000 cultivars
included in the wiki, an average of almost 10,000
cultivars have been entered each year. That is the
equivalent of writing a decennial checklist every
year! Inputting data from the R&Is is not a matter
of simply copying those pages. The use of all caps
has to be converted to the format promoted by
the International Registration Authorities Code of
Nomenclature; most abbreviations are eliminated;
links are created to parentage and hybridizers;
and, many annotations of information are added
from the hybridizers’ original descriptions in their
catalogs or iris lists. Thus, unrecorded information
often not in the original registration is added. All
of this effort requires time, dedication and a sharp
intellect which this nonagenarian demonstrates daily.
Congratulations to Betsy Higgins. Her picture here
was taken on her 94th birthday!
Terry Laurin, Region 2,
Aurora, ON, Canada
For the last thirty
years Terry Laurin has
run his own perennial
garden business. He
is also a certified ski
instructor with the
Canadian Ski Instructor
Alliance. Terry’s love of iris started early. His late
aunt, Verna Laurin, was an avid iris collector. He
remembers as a child playing between the iris
beds in her Toronto garden. Sixty years later he
has over 600 different iris cultivars growing in his
own garden located in Aurora, Ontario, Canada.
His garden is a display garden for the Historic Iris
Preservation Society, the Society for Siberian Iris
and the Median Iris Society.
Terry is the current president of the Ontario Iris
Society (ONIS) which, with the help of his aunt, was
formed in 1962 as the Toronto Regional Iris Society.
He is a past director and past vice-president of
the Canadian Iris Society as well as a past director
of the Dwarf Iris Society. He currently occupies
his time as Photo Manager for the American Iris
Society Iris Encyclopedia or wiki. Terry is also
an accredited American Iris Society Garden/
Exhibition judge.
It was at the 2012 AIS National Convention (he
and wife Kate Brewitt are perennial attendees)
in Ontario, California that Terry approached Bob
Pries with a proposal. He suggested that he contact
owners of various iris websites with the goal of
asking them for permission to upload pictures from
their websites to the wiki. Website owners were
eager to help with this venture. When the word
got out that Terry was doing this project he found
himself receiving slides, CDs, thumb-drives and
emails with JPEGs from people around the world.
As a result he has uploaded more than 320,000
pictures to the wiki over the last six years. Terry
would like to thank all the people who contribute
to this ongoing project as their contributions
have greatly enhanced the AIS wiki and made it a
better resource for all iris lovers. All hybridizers
should send images of their new introductions
each year to Terry Laurin at tlaurin@rogers.
com. Congratulations to Terry for his dedication
and devotion as Photo Manager for the AIS
Encyclopedia!
d
Terry Laurin
Winter 2019 AIS Bulletin 47