Gladiolus The Bride
Small, early and pure white, 'The Bride' is nothing like the heavy summer gladioli. Gladiolus x colvillei 'The Bride' produces slender spikes of loosely spaced white flowers with a faint green throat, each one open and starry rather than tightly ranked, on stems fine enough to move in the wind. Narrow upright leaves come first. Flowering runs November to January.
Because it is early and light, it works in places a large gladiolus would dominate. Plant groups of corms through a border, in a cutting patch, or in a pot on a sunny step. The white sits well in a cottage or coastal garden and reads clearly at dusk. It is one of the best early cut flowers.
Set corms 8 to 10 cm deep and about 10 cm apart, in an open sunny bed with soil that drains freely. Nanus types like this are not fully hardy: in most of the country the corms can stay in the ground with a mulch over winter, but in frost-prone inland and southern gardens they are better lifted, dried and stored once the foliage dies down. Plant in autumn for spring flowering.
Grows to around 0.6 m in flower with a narrow upright footprint.
Trimming: Cut flower spikes for the vase or remove them at the base once they finish, leaving at least four leaves so the corm can build for next year. Clear the foliage only after it yellows fully.
Deadheading: Take individual flowers off as they brown to keep the spike looking clean, which matters more on a white cultivar than a coloured one.
Fertilising: Feed with a general fertiliser as shoots appear and again as the buds form. Avoid high nitrogen, which produces leaf at the expense of the spike.
Watering: Water steadily from the time shoots appear until flowering finishes. Reduce watering as the leaves yellow, and keep dormant corms dry.
Pest Control: Silver streaking on the leaves and spotted flowers point to thrips, the main gladiolus pest. Aphids gather on developing spikes, and slugs take young shoots in a wet spring.
Disease Management: Wet soil and still air bring on corm rot and botrytis. Inspect corms before planting and throw out anything soft or mouldy, and store lifted corms somewhere dry and airy.
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