Last year, I went a little mad for gladioli and filled my allotment with them. I would wander back through the park from a day’s digging with armloads of the blooms to take home. It felt so decadent to have such huge flowers to fill the house with. I planted one row in rich, velvety renaissance hues – deep purples (Black Sea and Espresso), plums (Plum Tart) and burnt peach (Indian Summer). And on the other side of the allotment, down the central path, a line of pure trash shades – pinks, oranges and yellows (Norma Jean, Prince of Orange, Pink Parrot and Bambino Candy Bar). Gladioli need to be picked early in the morning, cutting the spikes as soon as the first buds are colouring up to ensure the longest displays. Once in the vase, replace the water often and whip off any spent blooms towards the bottom of the spike as quickly as possible. The flower spike blooms from bottom to top and, if you don’t remove the spent lower ones, the ones above can give up and never bloom. With a little care you can get the whole spike to remain in good health for a week or two. Glads, much like dahlias, like the good life. They want full sun, in rich but free-draining soil in a spot sheltered from wind. If they are left in the shade or in poor soil, you risk not getting any blooms from them. And staking is also essential on nearly all except the dwarf varieties, as each flower spike can reach up to a metre tall and is heavy with it. If you are growing in pots, try the dwarf Gladiolus nanus ‘Charm’ (pictured below), which only grows to around 60cm and doesn’t need staking. Order your corms now (they are technically not bulbs, as they store their starchy nutrients in the stem itself rather than in fleshy leaves) and plant out in late April or early May. The corms need to be 15cm deep with 10cm between plants. If your soil is heavy, add grit to each planting hole. If you have some semi-rotted homemade compost, it won’t go amiss to top dress with this: it will help to lock in moisture and feed the bulbs a little as it breaks down. Glads flower roughly three months after planting. If you want them to return next year, you need to lift the corms in autumn once the foliage has died back. If it doesn’t say that the bulbs are pesticide-free, you can be assured they have been grown with chemicals, which is not good for the soil, rivers and wildlife where they came from (mostly the Netherlands) – and not good for yours either. Whereas Organic Bulbs and Natural Bulbs both offer organically grown corms at good prices, so please consider supporting them.