Cormaic's Garden - Plants

Garden Layout - Plants - Gladioli
Gladioli are late-comers to my garden. When I was in my teens, a local amateur gardener devoted his entire back garden, a plot roughly 10m x 10m, to gladioli. His entire year revolved around the raising of his prize blooms. Maybe it is that early memory of excess, maybe something else, but until I was given the corms for this variety, Gladioli 'Muscari' (apparently, they were a giveaway with some gardening mag my mother reads), I'd never even considered growing them.
I planted the corms in the kitchen bed, in the driest, sunniest part of that bed, alongside the crocosmia and the conifer, and was pleasantly surprised with the good results in their first year. They flower in mid-summer, with rich red blooms, some 600mm high, and not, as I had worried, totally out of scale for my garden. They were less prolific in their second year, with only 4 of the original 8 corms producing flowers. This may be because I left them in the ground over winter, despite knowing that they ought to be lifted. I was incapacitated at the end of that October, and by the time I was able to get back out into the garden, the frost had been and gone, so any attempt at salavtion would have been futile.
I've left them in the ground again over the winter of 1999-2000, and only time will tell if any have survived. If they have succumbed to the perils of Jack Frost, I think I might be tempted to seek out a few replacements, and take proper care of them, this time. :~)