February 1, 2024 Mandeville, LA
The Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative (LICI) began an iris restoration project in January of 2021 in Fontainebleau State Park near Mandeville, LA. At the invitation of the then-park manager, LICI was invited to use a freshwater bog next to a group of picnic pavilions near the park's beach to plant Louisiana irises from their iris rescue program.
Photo: This photo from January 2021 shows the first irises being planted in the iris restoration project in the bog at Fontainebleau State Park. The volunteers had to hand-clear some bushes and weeds to make space available for the irises to grow since much of the bog was overgrown. Nineteen volunteers planted one thousand irises.
All of the irises that were planted at the bog were the native I. giganticaerulea species of the Louisiana iris. They were planted in this public area of the park so that the blooming irises would be visible to the public, which furthers the LICI's goal of raising awareness of this native Louisiana plant. "The iris bog will also be a place for the irises to multiply on their own without any maintenance being needed so they can be thinned out in the future for use in other iris restoration projects inside and outside of the park," LICI's president, Gary Salathe, said at the time.
This video shows that during the 2022 spring iris bloom, the irises were doing so well in the bog that it landed as the number eight spot on LICI's annual spring ranking of places to see native irises blooming in southeast Louisiana.
The video above also shows an area on the right where the bog had yet to be cleared of brush. The ground level in that area was so high that it rarely held any standing water, which the I. giganticaerulea iris thrives in.
During the winter of 2022, LICI organized planting a few hundred more irises in the bog to fill up the last areas that held standing water most of the year. That resulted in the bog moving up to the fourth spot in the 2023 spring ranking.
Photo: During a LICI volunteer event in February of 2023, members of the US Coast Guard's Chief Petty Officers Association cleared off weeds, bushes, and vines to expand the iris plantings in the bog. They also planted five bald cypress trees and 150 Louisiana irises.
Later in 2023 the park manager was promoted and was replaced by a new park manager who was very interested in LICI's annual ranking of iris sites across south Louisiana. When she was told that the park's iris bog was ranked number four in the state as a place to see native irises blooming, she replied, "Well, we'll need to do something about that!" She wanted to know if she had the brush on the right side of the bog cleared out and then lowered the ground level and LICI filled it up with irises if that would help raise the bog in 2024's ranking. "We told her it would," Salathe says.
"Then something happened that had the potential to change everything," Salathe says. LICI had been posting multiple things on their Facebook page about the iris bog and how they needed to rescue many more irises to fill the new area once it was cleared of brush. They received a message through Facebook messenger from someone who read the postings that directed them to a remote area of the park that the person thought held thousands and thousands of these irises.
The video above shows only one of the areas of irises growing along the shoreline of
the newly discovered pond. (Notice how there are very few flowers on the irises.)
Once the remote pond was located it was determined that a 20-foot high dam created it. The dam, thought to be built in the 1940s, allowed the pond to be well above the water level of a nearby bayou that connects to Lake Pontchartrain. "We surmised that because of it being at a higher elevation, the pond and its irises had escaped for decades from being hit with saltwater storm surges flowing up the bayou from the lake due to the hurricanes or tropical storms regularly hitting or brushing past the area. The dam and height of the pond protected the irises and created what we now call the 'Jurassic Park of Irises' because tens of thousands of irises were growing in the pond." Salathe said.
According to Salathe, the irises were growing in such dense mats in the pond that it is unlikely that there was much of an iris bloom each year. "Irises need to be thinned out regularly or have plenty of space to expand to grow and bloom vigorously," he added.
LICI received permission from the manager to relocate irises from the pond once the work to clear the new areas of the bog was completed. The group began creating a plan to collect about 2,000 irises from a drainage way that interfered with water getting into the pond and then relocating them into the bog.
Since the very beginning of LICI planting irises in the bog, only about 40% of the overall bog has been available. The balance of the bog, seen in the photo, was covered in
brush and 10' tall trees.
"Then something happened that changed everything!" Salathe says. The area experienced an extreme drought that dried up the bog that summer and fall. "It turns out that while the manager was home sick for three days, the maintenance crew thought they would surprise her by clearing the entire bog that had no irises growing in it! As I stood there with her, looking out over the great expanse of newly cleared land and trying to get my head around it, I muttered, 'How much of this can we plant irises in?' Her response, though straightforward, took a while for it to sink in. 'You can plant the whole thing!' she replied", Salathe related.
Photo: Fontainebleau State Park Manager Jennifer Wallace in September of 2023, standing in front of the dry iris bog that her maintenance crew had entirely cleared.
Seeing an opportunity that might never come again and knowing that LICI had the irises to do it from the Jurassic Park of Irises, Salathe started "rallying the troops to see if it was even possible to pull this whole thing off." Once he had contacted every group that had previously helped them plant irises in the park the offers started coming in to help.
Photo: The park's maintenance crew is shown using equipment to drain the bog and install a pipe so it can be drained again if needed.
Unfortunately, the first winter rains ended the drought before LICI could organize the first iris planting at the bog. They filled the entire bog with water, making it almost impossible to plant any irises since their rhizomes float. After discussing this with the park manager, she had her maintenance crew install a 4" pipe under the driveway that acted as the bog's dam so the bog could be drained.
"We were finally ready to dig and plant irises!" Salathe said.
Photo: After two other volunteers dug up a trailer full of irises from the Jurassic Park of Irises the day before, the US Coast Guard's Chief Petty Officer's Guard's Association planted them into the bog. (Photo above.) "They planted an impressive number of irises but they had
hardly put a dent in the space we needed to fill. It was clear this would require
an 'eating an elephant approach'; one bite at a time," Salathe said.
Photo: The next day, volunteers from the St. Tammany Master Gardeners Association and workers from Gulf Corps/Limitless Vistas dug up additional irises from the Jurassic Park of Irises. "With this increased number of volunteers, they collected
over a thousand irises," Salathe said.
Photo: Two days later, with the threat of severe thunderstorms coming, a group that included people from the community, Wild Ones - a native plant group, and members of the St. Tammany Master Gardeners Association planted all of the irises. The last iris went into the ground 30 minutes before the storms hit.
Salathe said, "Then the big guns came to the rescue! Our friends at the non-profit Common Ground Relief hosted 22 student volunteers and their leaders from Saint Paul's Catholic Student Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They were in New Orleans for a week of habitat restoration work. Common Ground Relief then included our Fontainebleau State Park iris restoration project for two days the group would be in town. On the first day, they dug up an incredible 5,000 irises from the 'Jurassic Park of Irises.' (Shown in the video above) Then, equally unbelievable, they planted every last one of them the next day!" (Shown in the photo below.)
The final planting to finish the job occurred on January 24, 2024, six weeks after the first volunteer event. Volunteers from the Louisiana Conservation Corps planted 2,200 irises left over from an iris planting LICI did the day before at Nicholls State University Farm's wetlands project.
Photo: Volunteers from the Louisiana Conservation Corps are shown after the last 2,200 irises were planted after six weeks of iris plantings by various groups
in Fontainebleau State Park's iris bog.
Adding the last 2,200 irises and the 7,200 Louisiana irises the other volunteers had planted over the previous six weeks meant that LICI had planted an incredible 9,400 irises over six weeks into the bog. These irises have been added to what were likely 2,500 irises growing in the bog LICI had planted since the project started in 2021. "That means there are now almost 12,000 irises growing in the bog," Salathe proudly states.
These are the groups where the volunteers came from during the six-week effort:
St. Tammany Master Gardener Association
Wild Ones Pontchartrain Basin
The Coast Guard's Chief Petty Officers Association: New Orleans Chapter
Gulf Corps/Limitless Vistas
Louisiana Iris Conservation volunteers
Common Ground Relief
Volunteers from the local area that came out for a community iris planting event.
Saint Paul's Catholic Student Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Louisiana Conservation Corps
"We are so thankful for receiving all the help needed to complete the job!" Salathe says.
Photo: The day after the last irises were planted, a cap was put onto the 4" PVC pipe that acts as a drain for the iris bog. A heavy rain filled the bog to its full height a few days later.
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