But I don’t think you could possibly spend more than $5 or $10 on an original 
selection of bulbs—plus a few years’ patience—without having enough flowers 
to fill an entire good-sized lot. Sounds impossible but it’s true. I’ve done it. And 
on a lot that I couldn’t water, even—it wasn’t near a house—proving that 
glads will do well in any but very dry years, without artificial watering. 
The third method of reproduction that the gladiolus employs is making seeds, 
like any other flower, and there the advanced gladiolus hounds get in their best 
licks. They cross-fertilize one variety with another, through pollenizing seeds, 
and make their own personal new varieties which occasionally achieve great 
popularity. This third stage I haven’t reached yet, but I detect symptoms of 
the cae pe appearing and am afraid next year I’m going to take the third degree 
in the lodge. . 
* * * * * 
Meantime I’m getting a big kick out of my bulbs and bulblets, and next 
year I expect to have a thousand or more spikes coming up from July to Sep- 
tember, each one with eight to twenty beautiful flowers opening four, five, or 
six or more at a time. How can you possibly beat that for beauty? Sure, I love 
roses and delphiniums and dahlias and tulips, too, but where do you get a more 
joyful yellow than in the Spotlight gladiolus, or as intense a scarlet as 
Algonquin, or as surprising a smoky as High Finance, all tried and true inex- 
pensive varieties of glads? Or a longer period of bloom for each shoot. Or a 
longer season of bloom for various varieties. Or a longer lasting flower when 
cut and kept in water. Only fragrance is lacking, and they are working on that 
with promising results. x 
There’s one thing the home grower of glads can have that it is next to im- 
possible to buy at most florists—and that’s a bouquet of many colors. Try and 
buy one; it’s too much trouble, or they actually aren’t available, for most 
florists to make up. , 
But when you’re the boss, in absolute control of what colors to grow and 
which to pick, and when, you can have the greatest variety all summer. Pure 
white Snowbank, charming lavender Elizabeth the Queen, and bronzy Bernece 
go perfectly in a bouquet with Oregon Gold, Purple Supreme and Red Charm, 
and for good measure add a spike or two of a smoky like Irak, a violet like 
Pelegrina or Blue Beauty, a dark velvety red like Black Opal, and creamy Fair 
Angel, and—you couldn’t ask for anything more! 
Put in some large Ogarita bulbs next year, and the day you walk out in your 
garden and find the tip of the Ogarita spike actually soaring over your head— — 
unless you’re above six feet—is the day you'll be hopelessly hooked for glads for 
the rest of your life. While your eyes feast on the great big luscious blooms of 
reddish apricot that easily keep a week in water, you'll never be the same 
again, and life without gladilous would seem drab indeed if you ever had to 
face it again. ’ . 
WILLIAM K. Hutson 

