Gordon Boswell

Gordon Boswell

Posted by gordonboswell on August 17, 2015 | Last Updated: November 3, 2020 Flowers

Gladiolus – The Perfect August Flower

gladiolusMost Texans love to spend time outside, enjoying the beautiful warm and sunny weather in outdoor living spaces. If you’re lucky enough to have space on your property, you probably planted lots of flowers that you can enjoy with your family and friends while spending time outside. By August, we see many days of 100+-degree temperatures. When it’s that hot, it’s too dangerous to spend much time outside. You can still enjoy the beauty of flowers while you’re cooling off inside.

Our team of floral designers here at Gordon Boswell enjoy coming up with beautiful flower arrangements that showcase the best of summer’s flowers. We want to encourage our customers to think of cut flowers, whether in simple bouquets or elaborate arrangements, as a way to enjoy a taste of summer flowers while you’re stuck inside, retreating from the intense heat.

The flower for the month of August is the Gladiolus. We adore these stately flowers. They are breathtakingly beautiful, but they also happen to be one of the best cutting flowers there is. The towering spikes are filled with flowers. The number of flowers on a spike depends a lot on the species, the height of the mature plants, and growing conditions. Suffice it to say that a single stem typically produces many flowers.

While gladioli are recognizable as a staple of any perennial garden – especially in flower gardens that are designed for cutting, most people don’t realize that they are actually native to Africa. The genus Gladiolus contains roughly 260 species. Most of the species in the genus are (or were) endemic to places in Sub-Saharan Africa – most notably, South Africa. Some species come from other tropical regions of Africa.

The gladioli varieties that are sold commercially throughout the United States are species that have been hybridized from the native African varieties to be more suited to a wider variety of growing conditions, and to be more desirable as cut flowers.

gladiolus

Blue Rhapsody Bouquet

Simple Advice for Growing Gladioli in North Texas

The temperate climate of North Texas is well suited to growing gladioli. If you want to plant them on your property, choose a sunny location. The best time to plant them is in early spring when you’re sure that there’s no longer a chance of frost. Make sure that the soil is warm enough to till or plow. You need to be able to loosen the soil to a depth of 12- or 15-inches. Mix compost into the tilled soil.

Place each corm about 4-inches below the soil surface, and allow 3- to 6-inches of space between each corm. Cover the corms with soil and put a 4- to 6-inch layer of mulch on top of the soil. This keeps the soil cool, inhibits weed growth, and helps the soil retain moisture. Make sure that the soil is consistently moist throughout the growing season.

If you don’t have any gladioli to enjoy in your own garden, or they aren’t in full bloom yet, we’ve got the perfect summer bouquet that you can enjoy indoors. If you want to grab someone’s attention, you’ll definitely do that with the Blue Rhapsody Bouquet . This delightful combination of blues, pinks, and purples is filled with some of the loveliest summer flowers, including larkspur, stock, hydrangeas, roses, and gladioli.