A memorable history began in the autumn of 1970, I (Jutta) then picked up a stray dachshund and took it back to its owners. At that time we had lived for 10 years on the 1st floor of a semidetached house and we used half the garden. By the way I've been a gardener all my life and "infected" my husband. The owners of the dachshund lived 3 houses down in an old wooden dwelling. Despite them living so close to us we never got around to paying them a visit.

They welcomed back the runaway and quite unexpectedly came up with a proposal. They knew my husband and I by sight and our 4 children and they also knew that our house was rather crowded. Without further ado they proposed we swap houses and showed me theirs. It obviously needed getting used to with the dark wooden panelling and everything in rather poor condition. But an entire house - freedom for our entire family - we quickly said yes and had a thorough look at everything.

The northern slope (about 1000m2) was home to very tall trees: maples, oaks, hazel trees, etc. At the time of their planting they had to blast holes as the entire hill is made up of rocks and greenstone a somewhat brittle kind of rock. And then there was the southern slope! That was an extra piece of land they were leasing. Completely neglected and rocky. Limitless thoughts haunted my mind.

Again we were very lucky as the City allowed us to buy the southern slope. That was in January 1971. On frostfree days and with the help of pickaxes and crowbars we reclaimed the land. We uprooted 23 trees, burnt and cleared for weeks on end. We built pathways and steps and multilevel borders. With an old laundry basket we schlepped the then available plants to the new garden.

At that time we were already collecting iris, albeit very old varieties. Only later we found out about the sensational novelties from the USA. I remember "Stepping Out" which has been our absolute favourite for years. Buying these novelties has always been very difficult for us, at least then. Our currency was not convertible. Importing catalogues was prohibited. Varieties were simply not readily available. We had to operate in the shadows but that only made it more precious to us hobby collectors.

Every year my sister in Hamburg (West Germany) sent us Schreiner's Iris catalog which we dearly treasured. We had to smuggle it into our country via Czechia. Later we used the same smuggling route for all plants. And we did it all with our motor bike as it was impossible to buy a car.

Year after year we made new iris borders and also planted other curiosities such as cultivars of blue spruce, european tree peonies, magnolias, azaleas, rhododendron and even a giant redwood.

We'd always grown daylilies but only old varieties. But here Francois Verhaert – who gave a slide talk in Leipzig back in 1989 – provided us perspective. We started to long for daylilies and we have been yearning for them ever since. Over the years we increasingly met with iris fatigue in our borders. Despite all our efforts our pet plants only flowered in newly made beds. Our soil is always too dry and very porous like dust. In the Vogtland region it hardly ever rains and only sparingly. We observe the clouds come and go. The more irises took a back seat the more daylilies we bought. They prosper for us but we always have a water shortage. The solar irradiation on the south slope is not to be neglected.

The reunification of Germany in 1990 turned everything topsy-turvy. We were exactly 50 years of age and we were back to square one. We immediately bought a second-hand motorbike and discovered the other Germany. We lived a mere 30 km away from the border which previously we were not allowed to cross. We were able to buy the house we had lived in for 20 years and had it renovated: roof, balcony, heating. Interior accessories and flooring we attended to ourselves. For the garden, new opportunies became affordable. We were finally able to buy iris and hemerocallis novelties in West Germany and the USA. We also bought a used car and put it to use to transport soil, sand, gravel, peat, mulch, fertilizer – things we could never buy before. That enabled us to redesign the garden and improve plant growth. New rare plants found our way into our garden: Magnolia, blue spruce and wisteria.

Often the garden automatically changes. The blue silver fir cultivars that were stocky and often wonky were put to use as particularly beautiful Christmas trees for our children who meanwhile had their own families. We were left with 4 giant sargent spruces casting a lot of cloud and absorbing too much water. They took up valuable square meterage for our plants. But how were we to fell these giants without damaging our property. Then, in February 2002 a tornado by the name of Kyrill came to our rescue. It uprooted all 4 sargent spruces with root masses and all and spread it over the southern slope. We feared the worst but as incredible as it sounds nothing was destroyed. With great caution we cut and sawed ourselves out of the chaos and all shrubs and daylilies remained unscathed. We replanted everything from scratch and when I was rather helplessly looking at the huge holes the root balls had left Gunther said: why don't you put in stairs Dear and I immediately followed his advice.

Meanwhile we are both 70 years of age and we still love our garden and the chores that come with it. We now have approximately 300 irises and about as many daylilies. We are always eager to keep our collection updated and compost older varieties we no longer like. We also try our hand at hybridizing with daylilies but with our eternal drought conditions it takes years and years before we have maiden bloom on seedlings.

Our Vogtland is said to become even drier in the future. But before we are compelled to only planting cactuses I guess we will no longer be among the living.

We send our love to all who read these pages and wish them the very best, both for themselves and for their gardens.

Comments and queries to Jutta and Gunther are welcome at guenther-exner@online.de

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