Sandy’s Garden ... Gladioli

It was no surprise, therefore, that I was entirely in agreement with my wife’s suggestion that we buy a couple of bunches of gladioli to be displayed in a vase in our home when she saw the first of this season’s crop … well, the first that we have seen, strictly … in one of the local supermarkets very recently. And you will have gathered, from the fact that we buy gladioli, that we do not grow them in our own garden despite our liking for them and despite the fact that gladioli are said to be no more difficult to grow than tulips.

Lazy me might disagree with that claim, for I well remember the time and the care which went into my parents’ splendid gladioli. I was the boy who was sent off, brush and shovel in hand, to follow the cart belonging to the City of Perth Co-operative Society (CPCS) vegetable vendor who visited our street regularly, hoping his horse would oblige with a free gift of manure to take back home. I was the boy who cycled, hessian sacks held on to the rack on the back of my bike, to the Perth Corporation parks department’s compost heaps to fill my sacks … legitimately … with free well-rotted compost and walk home, sacks perilously perched on my bike’s crossbar, to deliver my odoriferous load to shallow pits which I had dug in the soil earlier. Gladioli like rich, well-drained soil; and these spring preparations were done to help feed the bulbs and to act as a reservoir to limit the amount of summer watering the corms would need … hopefully … if they were to give of their best.

Being merely the young labourer, I was not trusted with the skilled part of the work … planting the corms … although I was permitted to watch as my garden-gloved mother loosened the soil with which I had covered the compost-and-manure layers in the pits. Each corm was carefully set in a preformed hole about 10cm deep … it really was 4 inches in these far-off days … with the pointed end facing up, covered with soil and pressed down firmly. The corms were spaced roughly a hand span apart … something between 6 and 8 inches … and were well watered when the planting was complete. It usually took 9 or 10 weeks in very round terms, dependent on the weather, for the corms to root, grow and come into flower. These elegant, colourful, showy spikes were often cut to be given as presents to friends and relatives and to be used as cut flowers in our own home, so there was seldom much need to pluck off dead flower heads to encourage the plants to develop replacements, although we did water the plants regularly throughout the summer. Come late summer and the threat of overnight frosts, the corms were carefully lifted and remaining withered foliage snapped off before the corms were dusted with sulphur and dried off for two or three weeks in the garden shed. Then the new corms were separated from the original corms beneath them and placed into straw-lined boxes to be overwintered, usually in the frost-free coal cellar.

Well, I suppose that, were I to give as much care to my tulips as my mother gave to her gladioli, I might have some of the finest tulips in my neighbourhood. But I don’t; and, probably because I have such clear 60 and 70-year-old memories of the magnificent gladioli coming into flower in my parents’ garden at this time of year, we buy gladioli, occasionally called ‘sword lilies’ because their name comes from the Latin word gladius, meaning ‘ a sword’. And we do like to decorate our home with those spectacular blooms, originally from Asia, tropical Africa and Mediterranean Europe, but now available worldwide in a bewildering number of species and a yet more bewildering number of cultivars. Enjoy!