The Iris Garden

I've been working on this story about the MSU Iris Garden for about two months now, with a group on campus trying to restore the iris garden. Anyway, I just sent off another draft to my editor, and she's gonna work on it for awhile. I'm sure I'll post it here when we get it to its final stages. I'll also be doing a reading at the Bozeman Women's Historical Society in March, so look for more info about that.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a couple of pictures so you can see what I see.

Here is a picture of a clover field that I found. In the short creative nonfiction piece (which will be posted here), the idea for the iris garden comes to Norma while she's in a clover field near the Hyalite foothills.

I found this great picture of a clover field to help me with my visual images, and to help me get a feel for where they're sitting and talking and walking. I just love clover. Plus, it's kinda tasty. :-)

This picture is from the 40s, I believe. It's a picture of the Iris Garden after it was completed and the sundial was installed. The sundial was sort of a legend on campus, and it was lost after 1921. Then, just before the Iris Garden began, the sundial was mysteriously found in the ROTC barracks on campus that had been abandoned for new barracks and used as a storage facility.

For those of you familiar with the MSU Campus, this was before the CDC Playground, which would be to the left, and before Willson Hall, as well, I believe, which would be behind the picture-taker. It was also before Danforth Chapel, which would be to the right.

This is by far my favorite picture. It's the design for the garden, made by Dr. Hurlburt Cheever. (In the novel-version, Dr. Cheever's character is named Boyd Donovan, and is only loosely based on Dr. Cheever.) Unfortunately, Dr. Cheever does not appear in the piece of short creative nonfiction. Mostly because we didn't have the space. But also because the short piece is really about the beginnings of the Iris Garden, and the rest of the story is told later. So Dr. Cheever's part comes a bit after the idea for the garden was conceived. 

Anyway, that picture is my favorite because it's so colorful and vivid. It really feels like the kind of place that Norma imagines it to be when she talks so excitedly about a place where students can sit and feel the beauty of nature around them. I love it.

I just wanted to share these pictures because they were (and will continue to be) such an influential part of my writing process. So for those of you who are critiquing and/or reading either the short creative nonfiction or the longer novel, I just wanted you to have a look at the place. And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, or have no desire to read either piece, I wanted you to be able to see some really beautiful pictures and get a glimpse of what I'm working on.