I can confirm that deer leave the irises alone.
One thing to consider is that if you have a bed solely of iris, once bloom season is done (unless they are rebloomers) that bed is going to look awfully dull until the next year. (Imho.
) If you have lots of garden space (an acre or more) it won't matter much if one small part of it is solely upright foliage (though even then I would consider bordering it with iberis or alyssum or something else that will compliment the iris foliage and which has a longer bloom season).
If you have a smaller garden, though, you might want to scatter the iris around into beds which will have something else of interest going on, outside of the iris bloom season. I live on an acre property, and while I do have a few large patches of iris (all of the same kind), in general either the irises are in pots, or else they are in beds where something else is of interest (shrubs, colored or variegated Japanese maples, flowering perennials of one sort or another).
