---
title: How to Divide Siberian Irises
description: "Video: How to divide Siberian Iris | Irises are highly popular flowers in many gardens and for good reason – they’re hardy, reliable, beautiful and, in addition to being graceful and colorful – after all, the word “iris” means “rainbow” in Greek -- they attract butterflies and hummingbirds."
image: https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/siberian-iris-2.jpg
---

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[Landscape How-To Videos](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/blog/tag/landscape-how-to-videos) | 3 min read

April 2018

# How to Divide Siberian Irises

![Monique Allen](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/hubfs/Monique-Allen-Headshot-Leaning-on-Tree.jpeg) [Monique Allen](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/blog/author/monique-allen)

![How to Divide Siberian Irises](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/siberian-iris-2.jpg)

Irises are highly popular flowers in many gardens and for good reason – they’re hardy, reliable, and beautiful. Many gardeners prefer them because, in addition to being graceful and colorful – after all, the word “iris” means “rainbow” in Greek -- they attract butterflies and hummingbirds.

Among the over 300 species of irises worldwide, [Siberian Irises](http://www.vanberkumnursery.com/plant/iris-sibirica-caesars-brother/) in particular are popular because they are among the easiest to grow in a temperate climate like ours, easily adapting to USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 3 to 8. While the name might sound like they prefer a colder climate, they are in fact a group of hybrid flowers developed from two blue-flowered Asian species. The Siberian Iris (Iris sibirica) sports amazingly long lasting flowers in a cool and consistent spring. Too much rain and heat will wilt flowers prematurely. The most common is ‘Caesar’s Brother’ (photo).

###  ***How to divide Siberian iris***

They come in a variety of other colors and combinations -- white, light blue, lavender -- but they all feature the same growth habit and behavior in the garden, even though the flowers are different colors and sizes. Iris sibirica works well in a wide variety of gardens -- from simple garden borders to complex perennial gardens. This plant is comfortable in conditions ranging from part shade and boggy gardens to wet sites. It’s just a super easy plant to grow with very little effort. I recommend playing with several colors and making a wonderful spring show of color.

## **Managing your irises for better flowering and growth**

[![New call-to-action](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/22032217/d87b18f7-8812-4920-b0c2-66098a96635c.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/22032217/d87b18f7-8812-4920-b0c2-66098a96635c)While there are so many great things about irises, they have a dark side as well. Despite being so easy to grow and being so comfortable in many gardens, Iris sibirica grows big and can often outpace its bedfellows, effectively elbowing aside slower plants. When it starts to take up too much room, it can develop a dead center and will reduce its own flower production. That’s when it’s time to divide.

![siberian-iris-garden](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/siberian-iris-garden-Jul-13-2022-04-32-13-17-PM.png?width=800&name=siberian-iris-garden-Jul-13-2022-04-32-13-17-PM.png)

Make no mistake about it -- dividing Siberian iris is a physical job. It takes some serious effort because the plant gets deeply rooted and tenacious. It will not give up easily. I actually end up jumping on my nursery spade to get a good cut all around the outside of the plant. Then it becomes necessary to use some muscle and leverage to pry the plant out of the ground.

The best times of the year to divide an iris are October to early November and late March through April – basically as soon as the ground is thawed in the spring. It will be a big, heavy clump so it can be hard to get out of the hole without help. This is when I bless my younger staff for their able assistance. Sometimes, if left on my own, I just divide the plant right in the hole without pulling it out. A heavy nursery spade or sharp edger are great for this. But, by far, the very *best* tool to divide an old and entrenched Siberian Iris is a super sharp *axe*. Like I said, this is serious business.

![](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/twitter-logo_black_100-1-Jul-13-2022-04-34-11-87-PM.png)

## TWEETABLE TIP

### Video: How to divide Siberian Iris -- Make no mistake about it -- it’s a physical job, but worth it. These graceful, tall, colorful plants are a showstoppers in the spring garden.

#### VIA @GardenContinuum

[![Share on Twitter](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/TWEET-THIS-Jul-13-2022-04-34-13-41-PM.png?width=120&name=TWEET-THIS-Jul-13-2022-04-34-13-41-PM.png)](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://tgc.tips/2FdR8Q1&text=Video:%20How%20to%20divide%20Siberian%20Iris%20--%20Make%20no%20mistake%20about%20it%20--%20it’s%20a%20physical%20job,%20but%20worth%20it.%20These%20graceful,%20tall,%20colorful%20plants%20are%20a%20showstoppers%20in%20the%20spring%20garden.&via=GardenContinuum)

 

Once divided, you’ll simply plant one healthy section in the hole it came out of. If the soil looks thin and lacking, add some rich compost and plan to water it well and often -- one to two times a week for about 3 to 4 weeks after the transplant to keep the plant hydrated. Then you should be fine to monitor its condition and only water as needed.

Plan to plant your divided iris immediately so that the divided sections can be cared for well. If you have no place to plant these divisions, pot them up and give them to friends and neighbors. You can always donate them to churches, temples, and community centers that could use good plants and a pop of color in their garden each spring. These are such easy plants to care for that they make great gifts.

Siberian Irises – if you haven’t grown them before, I highly recommend you give them a place in your garden. These graceful, tall, colorful plants are a great backdrop for other early spring flowers, as well as showstoppers on their own. Need more tips? Consider downloading the eBook titled "[Demystify Your Landscape: Picking Plants.](https://www.thegardencontinuum.com/demystify-your-landscapeby-learning-how-to-pick-plants)"

[![Demystify Your Landscape by Learning to Pick Plants](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/22032217/6a970131-732d-4c69-a32d-e5be68a3e195.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/22032217/6a970131-732d-4c69-a32d-e5be68a3e195)

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"transcript": "Hi and welcome to the notes from the field, the garden continuums video blog. I'm Monique Allen and it is springtime and today I'm going to show you how to divide Siberian Iris, but before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about tools. Dividing plants is actually a pretty aggressive a task in the garden and you need some good tools to do it. Normally, if you're dividing perennials, you can do it with perennial shovels, so this is, we call it the spoon, but it's just a small little perennial shovel and then this is a long handled perennial shovel that looks just like a garden spade and so you can also use the normal sized garden spade where the head is about double the size of the size of this, so for irises and for grasses, sometimes you need a little bit more muscle and in that case you would use something like this which is quite heavy and it has a straight bottom on it and the way to the shovel itself is going to help you and you'll see when I go to divide the Siberian Iris, what I'm talking about. Now, I'll use this to actually dig the plant out, but then you actually need to divide it because you're going to notice that the plant is actually quite big and there are a couple of things you can use. You can use an edger, so a nice sharp edger a can. You can step on it. It's got this nice shelf on it and you can step on it to divide the plant, but sometimes that's not enough. In this case I think it will be fine, but I have had times when I have had to go after my Iris's, am I grasses with an ax, so I don't know what will be the right tool today. We'll see. But just so you know, if you're finding that your regular shovels aren't working, it isn't you. So we'll move on to the irs now. Okay, so now I'm in the garden and you can see right over here I've got a huge iris. So the iris from this point to this point way over here is about 30 inches and it's almost as wide as it is long. And if you notice the perennials around it, they're all much smaller so you can see all the perennials around it or just a little over a foot in diameter. Now this iris is going to get to be about this tall and the plant is going to grow up like this. So you can imagine what's going to happen. All this foliage is gonna. Hang over this plant and knees and that went over there and obscure them. So this plant has gotten way too big and it's overpowering this garden. So if you look at this one, you can see that there's not much going on in this center portion of the iris at all and you've got a nice big section right here. Another nice big section right here, and another big section right here. So when I look at this iris ic three plants, to illustrate that a little bit, if go over here, you can see another one, not as big, but you can see that this one also is probably about two feet around. And what I've done is I've gone and I've taken divisions out of this irs. So when I removed these divisions, and I'll clean this up a little bit to make it a better shape. You can see that that now this iris is more in keeping with the perennials around it. So I have all my tools with me. I brought them right near me, just smack them in the ground so that they're at reach because there's nothing worse than being in the garden and having to leave the garden to get your tools. I'm actually going to start with this big heavy one because I know that this iris hasn't been moved in a while and it's going to have a real firm grip and the garden, the first thing you're going to do is cut on the outside of the Iris. So basically what you're doing is you're tracing a shape around the outside and making straight up and down cuts so that you can extricate the garden. Uh, the, the iris from the garden. And then from there I'm going to make cuts through the center of the irs so that I can isolate the three sections that I want to separate. Now, the reason I'm doing that is because this iris is huge and I can't pick the whole thing up out of the ground. It'll just be super heavy. So this way I can pick it up in pieces. So I'm going to get started. Okay. So I got my cardio for the day and uh, so you could see some areas were really easy to dig in other areas. I really had to bend the shovel back in order to get the pieces out. And so now what you see is if I use my claw here and just kind of loosen up the soil that's in the pocket itself, you can see I have these big beautiful divisions. Um, and I got more than three because there were some little pieces. So here's a nice little guy, another real big one here, other small one. And then I got this monster over here which is still kind of grabbing hold. Looks like I'm getting a baby out of it. And then there you go. Iris is successfully divided and you can see this hole is big enough for a shrub. And ultimately I got, it looks like one, two, three, four small. I would call this a probably about a two quart size, which is actually a really healthy perennial. And then I got these two really big, um, what I would call probably two gallon size plants. And I have this big leftover whole, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take the biggest division because this garden does definitely called for Nice big plants and you can see just how beautiful this garden soil is. Just so friable and easy to work. I'm going to put this big monster back in. I think I'm actually even going to put in some of these small ones just to fill in some of the gaps so that I have a good size iris here and that's going to be my new iris. You can see I've pulled it away from these perennials. These are all circled tribes. I've got three of them with a nice lavender in front and a wood betony right over here. Make sure when you're dividing that when you put the plant back in the ground, you really tampered in there. Don't be afraid to use the flat tops of your fist in your body weight to just push that back in and then of course make sure that you water really, really well. Get some leaf mulch or really nice composted bark mulch or buckwheat, whatever you use to put your iris back in, and then all of these Iras divisions, they can get moved around into your garden to start new gardens or expand areas or they're great gifts for friends. So thank you very much for watching. Leave any comments or questions down below and happy gardening." 
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