My name is Yvette and I am the president of our society and would like to welcome you to our website!

Our group (SFIS) is 13 years old, 2008, at this time we have approx. 45 members that are signed up to receive our monthly bulletin, not all of these are active members, but that is alright, they can subscribe to our bulletin by paying their yearly dues if that is all they want or can do at the moment.

PLEASE REMEMBER THIS: We always need new members to share our love of this iris and to keep our society going! We have lots of things to do and that need a little of your time to help out with.

I am a charter member along with a handful of others that have been here from the start. Our first bulletin came out in our second month, February, 1996.

Starting in the first year, we had our first sale, and then the next year we had our first show, which was held at the Home and Garden Show. Since then we have moved to the Rose Room at the Auburn Civic Center to have our monthly meetings and our show. We have usually 2 sales per year and at that time besides selling a lot of iris we answer a lot of questions too. Our show is put on according to the American Iris Society rules and regulations, and is judged by (AIS) judges.

The American Iris Society is a nonprofit institution incorporated February 2, 1927, in the County of Philadelphia. We are also a nonprofit group and hope to have 501 (3c) tax status this year. We are affiliated with the AIS and are within the Region 14 section, their web address is http://www.aisregion14.org/.

Our goals are to continue educating ourselves along with the public on all species of iris, but most of us grow lots of tall bearded iris. We also grow median bearded iris which range in size from the miniature dwarfs to border bearded. The height range is from inches up to 40 plus inches in height.

Other iris some of us grow are spuria, louisiana, aril, arilbreds, species, winter blooming iris (unguicularis) and many others. We hand out information on the culture and care of iris.

Our monthly meetings are held on the 4th Tuesday of the month at 7 pm and we have a board meeting at least 3 times a year. We have monthly speakers on a variety of topics, ranging from how to grow different species of iris, how to show an iris in a show, garden grooming, and disease control and lots more.

We had several instrumental people who had a lot to do with forming our iris society, the first is Bertha Brownlee who approached Rob Cromwell (mentioned below this) about starting a group here in the Sierra Foothills. She was already a member of the Sacramento Iris Society so she had alot of experience to bring to us, and to help guide us. Bertha is and always has been the main stay of our group and we love her! There is no place she goes that she doesn't talk iris and try and recruit new blood:) Grocery stores, her dentist, you get the picture.

Rob Cromwell, who started his own commercial iris garden which was called Blue Iris Country Gardens which was located in Grass Valley by the Bear River. We met at various members houses at first because we had no money for anything else at the time. The first meeting was held at Bertha's.

Our first monies were from members dues.

Besides the above mentioned some of us have been on KAHI 950 radio to either promote our coming events or to answer callers questions. We have had articles and announcements appear in local papers supporting our group.

We have donated lots and lots of iris to various places like churches, the Placer Nature Center, Applegate Civic Center, Live Oak Waldorf School, and more. We have also donated to numerous schools as we are always trying to encourage the youth.

We have a youth section in our shows too; many schools have participated by coloring pictures of an iris flower, the youth if they so choose can enter the youth section of our show with an arrangement or just a stalk of an iris. They just have to know the name of the iris to enter in the show, excluding the arrangement section, as we all have to know the names of the iris we enter singly.

Many of us are members of the AIS. It is a great organization to belong too, with several nice publications yearly, more like mini books, with lots of great information, from people like you and me. The web address is http://www.irises.org/.

Feel free to email us at the address on our website with any and all questions you might have for us or about us.

A very special thank-you goes to David North for working so hard to get our societies website up and running. Thank-you, David!

Another thank-you to David who keeps helping me try and get things straight, especially when I try and work on the website and end up messing things up, David is always there to help me figure what I am doing wrong, or fix my messes:) Thank-you, David!