A new home for the Hanes Iris Collection honors the past and looks to the future
By Lauren Smith Hong, Marketing & Communications Director
The idea for a public garden on Duke University’s campus arose in the early 1930s from the vision and enthusiasm of Dr. Frederic M. Hanes, an early faculty member of Duke Medical School. Dr. Hanes deeply loved gardening and was determined to convert the debris-filled ravine on West Campus that he walked by daily into a garden devoted to his favorite flower, the iris.
Dr. Hanes persuaded his friend Sarah P. Duke, widow of one of the university’s founders, Benjamin N. Duke, to give $20,000 to finance a garden that would bear her name. “I have thought a great deal about your suggestion that I establish a flower garden in the hollow on the right-hand side of the main road leading to the Chapel at Duke University,” Mrs. Duke wrote to Dr. Hanes in 1934. “The more I have thought about it, the more I have become interested, because it seems to me it would not only be a great attraction but of distinct educational value.”
In 1935, more than 100 flower beds were in glorious bloom in the area that is now the South Lawn. They included 40,000 irises, 25,000 daffodils, 10,000 small bulbs and assorted annuals. Alas, heavy rains and the flooding stream that summer caused washouts and disease, including iris rot. By 1936, the original gardens were in decline, and Dr. Hanes convinced Mrs. Duke’s daughter, Mary Duke Biddle, to construct a new garden on higher ground: the Terrace Gardens of today.
Sarah P. Duke Gardens in 1935. More than 100 beds were planted in the area that is now the South Lawn.
To honor Dr. Hanes’s visionary contributions to the founding of Duke Gardens, the F. M. Hanes Memorial Iris Garden was established in 1953. While the iris garden has had many homes throughout Duke Gardens over the years, curator Mike Owens felt it only fitting to relocate the collection to the South Lawn in 2024 as a horticultural homage to the original gardens and its founder.
Curator Mike Owens’s design for the newly reimagined Hanes Iris Collection.
The newly reimagined iris garden features two distinct areas. On the northwest edge of the South Lawn, a series of low stone walls undulate through an existing pathway in serpentine waves. Here you will find more than 30 varieties of irises that prefer drier conditions, such as bearded iris, along with companion perennials that provide year-long seasonal interest, like sedum, catmint and grasses. Areas of lawn sweep through each row of beds, giving the impression that the walls have grown out of the landscape like an ancient relic of the original gardens. The design is both practical in its terracing of the sloping hillside–essential for preventing iris rot–and aesthetic in its echoing of iconic stone walls in the nearby Terrace Gardens.
The second area showcasing the iris collection is located along the southern edge of the South Lawn surrounding the small picturesque pond. Here you will find water-loving iris varieties like Louisiana iris (Iris ser. Hexagonae), which thrive in the moist conditions of the same topographical basin that tested the fate of Duke Gardens 90 years ago.
Plans are underway to expand the collection with the addition of species like the native dwarf crested iris (Iris cristata), as well as boulders, architectural elements and companion plantings placed in artful configurations (think flowering blue grape hyacinths planted to mimic a flowing stream bed). As the garden grows into the future, so will it continue to remember and honor our past.
Bearded iris and companion plants in artfully designed displays.
Photo by Sue Lannon.
Water-loving iris varieties surround the South Lawn pond.
Photo by Piper Epstein T’25.
A series of low stone walls undulate in serpentine waves, giving the impression that the walls have grown out of the landscape like an ancient relic.
Photo by Cathi Bodine.
The reconstruction and relocation of the iris collection to the South Lawn was made possible by a generous gift from Daniel S. Katz ’80 and family in celebration of his daughter Liza ’15.
Questions?
Please contact us at gardens@duke.edu.