Emily Stevens

Emily Jean Stevens was a world leading iris hybridiser in the 1940s and 1950s, famous for creating the "Pinnacle" iris as well as a number of other outstanding amoenas.

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Biography

Childhood

Emily Jean Stevens, made famous for her contributions to iris hybridisation, was born Emily Burgess on 3 September 1900 at Stratford, New Zealand, to Alfred Henry Burgess and Fanny Eleanor Hollard who were farming in the area. Her parents later grew fruit and flowers at Kaiti, Gisborne, and Jean attended Kaiti School, winning a scholarship in 1913. The next year Jean's family moved to Auckland where she briefly attended Auckland Girls’ Grammar School before the family shifted again to Waikanae in 1915. She then stayed home to care for her youngest sister, educating her until standard one, while also working in the family’s new bulb-growing and cut-flower business.

Cultivating Her Skills

In 1921 Alfred Burgess imported some hybrid cultivars of tall bearded iris, and in 1923 their propagation and sale became Jean’s responsibility. She quickly and skillfully began to create improved and novel varieties of these irises. She was informed in this by a paper of English enthusiast A. J. Bliss on the matter of making successful crosses, and after joining the Iris Society (later the British Iris Society) in 1928 she sent selections to overseas hybridisers for assessment. Her first success in terms of overseas recognition was the "Destiny" hybrid. Geoffrey Pilkington, secretary of the Iris Society, encouraged its release on the British market and in 1934 it became the first southern hemisphere-bred iris to receive the society’s bronze medal.

Jean met Wallace Rex Stevens, a partner in Stevens Brothers nursery, Bulls, at a flower show in 1935, and the couple married on 22 February 1936 at Otaki. They had one child, Jocelyn, in 1937, and the same year the first Stevens Brothers catalogue of bearded irises was issued. Three of Jean’s irises received awards of merit from the Royal Horticultural Society between 1936 and 1939. Another, "Inspiration", attracted the attention of noted American iris hybridiser Robert Schreiner, who introduced a selection of her cultivars to the American market.

World Recognition

In 1945 Jean and Wallace moved the business to Bastia Hill, Wanganui. Here Jean started expanding the colour range in tall bearded irises of the amoena group – those with white standards and violet, violet-blue or purple falls. When "Pinnacle", an outstanding white and yellow amoena, was introduced in 1949 Stevens gained international recognition, and the iris became one of the most popular in the world. The American Iris Society (1951) and the Royal Horticultural Society (1959) both granted Stevens an award of merit for its creation. Jean subsequently produced amoenas with deeper yellow, pale blue, plum-red and pink falls.

Stevens' writings appeared in New Zealand gardening magazines and in iris publications overseas, and in 1952 her handbook "The iris and its culture" was published in Australia. She was a foundation member of the Australian Iris Society in 1948, and in June 1949 she became federal president of the renamed Australian and New Zealand Iris Society, although administrative difficulties resulted in her recommending separation in November. She founded the New Zealand Iris Society with C. A. Teschner and D’Arcy Blackburn in 1949 and was made president, an office she held for 2 years until 1951, and again later from 1956-1957. Stevens was the editor of the New Zealand Iris Society for 10 years and was elected a life member in 1959. She was also registrar of New Zealand cultivars from 1957 until her death.

Stevens was awarded The British Iris Society's prestigious Foster Memorial Plaque in 1953, and received the American Iris Society’s hybridisers’ medal in 1955. Between 1949 and 1961 her cultivars achieved two American awards of merit and six honourable mentions. She was guest speaker at the American society’s annual convention in 1956 and was appointed an honorary judge in 1962. Jean and Wallace Stevens were also New Zealand pioneers in utilising flora from across Australasia and South Africa, especially proteas and leucadendron, for large-scale cut-flower production. Jean made the first known crosses between Leucadendron laureolum and Leucadendron salignum, and her son-in-law Ian Bell (who joined the partnership around 1961), at her suggestion, instituted a more extensive hybridisation programme in 1962–63 that yielded the important flower export "Safari Sunset". Between 1961 and 1963 the Stevenses faced losing part of their land to a proposed primary school, but an appeal supported by horticultural authorities in New Zealand and overseas was successfully upheld. The Queen Mother asked to visit the Stevens’ gardens during her 1966 tour and reportedly left ‘with an armful of slips and cuttings’.

Early in 1967 Stevens was elected an associate of honour of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture. In the same year her pink amoena "Sunset Snows" took third place at an international iris competition in Florence and won cups for the best early variety and for the most original colour, the first time a prize in the competition had gone to the southern hemisphere and the first time one cultivar had collected three prizes.

Posterity

Jean Stevens died in Wanganui on 8 August 1967, having registered some 391 iris hybrids in her lifetime. The wholesale floristry business was continued by her husband Wallace Stevens until he died in 1974, and has remained in the family with Ian and Jocelyn Bell.

References

• Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Emily Stevens