Aruba, I hope it's OK if I jump in here. One problem with ordering plants from Australia is that they have exactly the opposite seasons from us, so Barry Blyth sends them in February or March and suggests you pot them up until it's a good time to plant them in the ground for your zone, and sometimes the plants get confused and try to bloom over the summer, in which case he recommends you cut the stalks to prevent them from blooming to help the plant along. And then it's possibly another year after that before they acclimate and will bloom at the right time. (I think I have that right, don't I?) Another problem for me was the Phytosanitary and other charges for importing them from Australia. I ended up spending almost $350 for four irises, and none of them ended up blooming right for me. In fact, I ended up purchasing more rhizomes of three of them from Keith a couple of years later, and that's how I finally got blooms on GLAMAZON, RARER THAN RUBIES and TRULY WICKED. So I consider my one venture into importing irises from Australia pretty much a bust. But I think Tom had a much better experience than I did.
However, Keith Keppel gets them from Barry at least a year before they are introduced and gets them acclimated to our opposite seasons so they are on our schedule for blooming, plus there is no extra $40+ charge for importing them from overseas. So that's why I look to Keith Keppel for my Blyth irises now, and they grow really well for me.
