184 
The Garden Magazine, May, 1923 
cally a self-color, for it has no blotch or noticeable markings of 
any other color. The flowers are big and close together, yet the 
stalk is graceful; and the edges of the petals are slightly fluted. 
It is a wonderfully strong grower. One corm sent up a double 
stalk, with seventeen flowers on one branch and seven on the 
other. I had a bunch of these on the dining room table: 
everyone raved over it, and 1 could hardly eat for looking at it. 
1 do not care so much for dull pastel tints, yet 1 greatly admire 
Desdemone. It is a superb thing of unique beauty, and most 
vigorous. I can hardly believe it, but 1 have my record: I 
bought one corm, and from it 1 had twenty-eight flowers, in 
two stalks, one of them two-branched. The flowers are huge, 
and of the strangest color, a smoky old-rose, with big cream 
blotch, feathered dull red. 
The only pale yellow that I have ever had is Schwaben, 
one of my older varieties that did not bloom last year. 1 re¬ 
member it as very good. Last summer, in another garden, I 
had an opportunity to study three of the newer yellows, Polly¬ 
anna and Flora and Gold. 1 think Pollyanna is quite the 
best. Flora has a green under¬ 
tone in its yellow, and the flow¬ 
ers of both Flora and Gold are 
arranged on the stalks in a 
rather ugly fashion in a very 
stiff double row. Pollyanna 
is the yellowest, and the spike is 
slim and graceful. 1 like every¬ 
thing about it except its silly 
name! 
ception; it is a beauty and catches the eye at once. The color is 
quite unique, a warm red-apricot. But Regulus is very pasty 
in pale dull yellow and red; and Yeoman, though a fine yellow- 
pink, does not much interest me. 1 prefer the bigger types. 
Of course, I have made only a tiny beginning, but the Gladio¬ 
lus 1 consider my best are: Halley, Baron Hulot, Panama, 
Myrtle, Evelyn Kirtland, Martha Washington, Chicago- 
Salmon, Desdemone, and Alice Tiplady. 1 hope to add this 
year Mary Pickford, Mrs. Dr. Norton, Mr. Mark, and 
Pollyanna. Other fine sorts that are well worth a place in 
the garden if I can make room for them are; Crimson Glow 
a red that is glorious in vases; the salmon-pink Marshal 
Foch; the blush-pink Le Marechal Foch; Afterglow, of a 
strange unusual brown salmon; and the orange-pink and cream 
Jenny Lind, with buds like a Tea Rose. Of course, even a 
little garden like mine has room for a great many of these small 
plants; but 1 think perhaps it is more satisfactory to have a good 
many of a few kinds, planted at different times, for a succession 
of big vases of one’s very favorites. 
I HAVE now told of my favor¬ 
ites in my little collection. 
Some of the others did not come 
up to my expectations. L’Inno- 
cence, one of the supposedly 
choicest I bought, is small and of 
a pasty tint with queer sharp 
flecks of deeper color along the 
petal edge. But 1 must admit 
that its texture is wonderful, it 
makes me think of alabaster. 
Roem von Kemmerland is as 
big as L’Innocence is small. 
“Watermelon pink’’ sounded 
pretty enough in the catalogue, 
but a bluish undertone spoils it, 
and it is redeemed only by the 
soft yellow blotch. (I wish there 
were more self-colored Gladiolus, 
one gets a little tired of the al¬ 
most inevitable blotch or ray of 
another color.) 
Loveliness is a small flower 
that does not live up to its name. 
It is a combination of pale cream 
and mauve-pink, slightly remi¬ 
niscent of that great beauty, 
Mrs. Dr. Norton, but no one 
who ever saw the latter would 
care to glance at poor Loveli¬ 
ness. Mrs. Dr. Norton is one 
of the very finest Gladiolus 1 
know, and 1 long to possess it 
another year. 
1 am not a great admirer of the 
Primulinus hybrids. I saw so 
many huge and tastelessly ar¬ 
ranged bunches of them this past 
summer everywhere that 1 grew 
weary of their weak colors. 
Alice Tiplady is the great ex¬ 
HANDS ACROSS THE GARDEN WALL 
An evident example of friendly cooperation between neighbors whose gardens 
mingle over the wall, Gladiolus and Nasturtiums on the near side and on the far 
side again Gladiolus with starry-faced Campanula running free-footed between 
