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jmcdmd

Gladiolus: Favorites?

jmcdmd
12 years ago

Really fell in love with glads this summer....despite the heat. I gave them no care and was able to enjoy some of them.

I know there are tons of varieties. Any on-line sites you can recommend for viewing good pictures of the countless varieties.

Not opposed to off-line sources either.

Thanks.

Comments (3)

  • jlee160
    12 years ago

    I fell in love with windsong this year.

  • Maryl (Okla. Zone 7a)
    12 years ago

    Glads are one of my favorite bulbs. Even this year with our record breaking heat(110+)plus a long drought, many of my Glads still performed admirably. I prefer the "florist" type glads, so all the ones named are in that group.
    *Priscilla has been pretty much perenial in my garden, even with a low of -7 last winter a few bulbs (without protection mind you) managed to survive and bloom well this year. It is one of the shortest Glads I grow. Around 3 feet or so.
    *Good News-a beautiful medium rose pink. It also has overwintered for about 3 years now. Tall grower. An oldie but a goldie.
    *Jubilee-A prolific bloomer, often having more then one stem to a shoot. A warm orange that changes shades to other equally beautiful colors.
    I buy almost all my bulbs from a specialty grower in the United States, Noweta gardens. They have a lovely color catalog available. They communicate strictly by e-mail. Their bulbs have always done well for me.

    Jubilee:
    {{gwi:22989}}

    *

    Here is a link that might be useful: Noweta Gardens Glads

  • Ispahan Zone6a Chicago
    12 years ago

    Some of my favorite glads are those simple old-fashioned wildflowery ones that are still near to the species. Boone, Carolina Primrose, and Bolivian Peach are especially beautiful and vigorous. They are so graceful and striking that few people who see them actually recognize them as glads. They last quite a while as cut flowers and the colors are so bold yet muted--almost "antique"--at the same time. Oh, and they multiply extremely fast, too. Start with one blooming size corm and next season you will have 10 blooming size corms and 75+ cormels. Winter hardiness is phenomenal. I always wonder why the corms cost so much when they multiply so easily, but they are a wonderful and exquisitely beautiful investment at any price. Trust me on this. Buy some and you will never regret it.

    'Atom' is another small beautiful one, though it is slightly less graceful than the three mentioned above and has a touch more of florist glad blood in its veins. It is wonderful both as a garden plant and as a cut flower.

    There is a species form called Gladiolus oppositiflorus var. salmoneus that is also beautiful, easily grown and has a warm salmony-pink color that will catch your eye from a distance. The florets are more spidery and slightly more widely spaced than florist glads. It has excellent winter hardiness and is wonderful as a cut flower.

    As for regular florist glads, I spent many years of my life not liking them due to their floppiness and stiffness in the garden but I recently discovered some older ones that I like a lot. They are the stunning coral-pink-orange 'Spic and Span' and the rose-violet-magenta 'Fidelio'. They are truly color slam dunks, so gaudy and vulgar that you can't help but adore them and want to multiply your stock and grow hundreds of them. Although hard to blend in the garden, they excel as cut flowers and remind me of my grandparents who every summer had large bunches of cut glads in vases throughout their home that they picked from their garden.

    And if I lived in a warmer climate, I would plant as many Gladiolus tristis as I could find. This small graceful species grows throughout the late autumn and winter and flowers in early spring with lots of little pale yellow flowers that are amazingly fragrant at night. In my climate it needs a cool greenhouse to survive, which I don't have. So I can only dream about it...sigh. If only it could be adapted to summer growing!

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