I've had to either use the metal plant supports or tomato cages, Susan. They eventually became more effort than I chose to give them. I love glads and think they can be gorgeous with roses and other perennials, but it was the labor and attention I eventually resented giving them. Kim

Well, there you go. I have been putting cylinders of concrete reinforcing wire around them, so at least I'm on the right track, but I may also just give up on them.

Currently I'm being attracted to putting less stiff tall plants among the roses anyway -- things that bend and blow in the breezes, like agrostemma. They play well with the more fixed form of the roses.

Susan

Susan, I've found that interplanting irises among the roses works well for me. It's lovely when they bloom and the rest of the time they provide a columnar counterpart to the more billowing outline of the rose bushes, and they need so little care. More and more I strive for maximum effect with minimal output, and the results are still satisfying, in my eyes at least.

Ingrid

Glads did not work for me. They fall over and then produce a million bulblets and won't go away. I've been pulling out the bulblets for years.

Susan, Thanks for posting this. I keep looking at glads and then for some reason or other don't get them.

I have the same problem with some lilies I have--oriental and Asiatics. One I have is so beautiful but gets about 6 feet tall and flops right over.

I'm glad to know about glads so I can quit looking at them. The lilies I have take enough staking already.

Irises are nice, and I have lots of Tall Beardeds, not to mention at least a dozen new historics that will be arriving for fall planting, but....they bloom for such a short time that they are a bit of a disappointment for the amount of real estate they take up. I cut most of them down to about 6" at about this time of year so that they don't block the view of prettier blooming things.

Glads have probably had as much time in the garden as they are gonna get. Problem is last year I got two very beautiful new ones in trades and as we all know glads make more glads which make more glads, and I'm still not any good at throwing stuff away. But....no more new glads for me!!!! I'm not sure if I'm glad (pun intended) or sad that no one seems to have a solution to the problem they present.

Oh well...
There are always more plants to lust after....:-)))

Susan

I just stake my glads. It's the only way to keep them upright that I've found. I have iris too and although the leaves will stay fairly upright I still have to stake the bloom stalks because if it's windy or rainy they all fall down. If you don't want to be bothered with staking then plant something short.

"If you don't want to be bothered with staking then plant something short".
Not at all. Not at all. Cannas come tall and very tall and never need staking; Verbena bonariensis is very tall and just waves around in the breeze; Hollyhocks pop up everywhere and don't need any staking; Agrostemma and Gaura aren't particularly tall, but they certainly aren't short and they wouldn't ever want staking.....

Susan

I agree with Ingrid - I adore the way irises and roses work together. I know the irises don't keep blooming, but you can help that situation by planting some of each type (early-, middle-, late-blooming). Thus your irises will seem to be blooming for a longer season. Then, after they are all finished, you could have something airy and perhaps blue (lobelia, for instance). I find that the colors of many iris work so well with the colors of old roses, something I wouldn't say about many other plants, such as daylilies (I love them, but their colors seem to be somehow a little jarring with old roses). Of course, there are some fairly garish iris among the newer varieties - sometimes the hybridizers seem to care so much about innovation that they forget about taste, in my opinion. Incidentally, there are heirloom irises, just as there are Old Roses. I spent a lovely time on the website looking at pictures - alas, I can't remember the name, but doubtless it was something like Iris Heritage Society. Of course, finding the plants could be a little harder, but as I recall, there was a list of vendors on that website.

Laura

In my front yard I grow a very dark purple glads behind an Iceberg rose. My experience is the same as others described I have to stake each flower stalk individually, but then they are fine. I love the look and also the height at which they produce their big showy flowers. Besides the staking I find them to be pretty easy to care for spectacular bulbs and you might have guessed it already: I will keep mine!

Christina

Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Garden Dreams

Okay, so let's talk about staking the glads for a minute.

What do you do if your glads overwinter and stay in the same place for a few years? Do you just keep staking them to the original stake? Do you add stakes? Do you dig up the increased bulbage and spread it out?

I really would like to keep a selection of glads in among my roses, so I'm gonna do whatever it takes, but I'm still not quite sure what that is. I do think that I'm not supposed to add stakes after they start growing since then I might injure a bulb, right?

I hope you don't mind indulging me here on this forum rather than sending me packing off to the "bulb" forum....

Susan

Susan, you can always use the thin bamboo stakes to keep the glads upright. I use them on the yellow Kangaroo Paw in the purple and gold bed. The thing is too narrow for all I have crammed in it, so the flowers lean out toward the lawn. Staking them with short lengths of the green bamboo keeps them upright until they are ready to be cut off. Should work for glads, too. If you plant bamboo, you'll always have a steady supply of disposable stakes! Got one in the front yard. Want it? hehehe Kim

I knew there was a reason I bought three bamboo plants last year when Bamboo Sourcery said they were going out of business (which turned out not to be the case....). Guess I should go and feed them so they will give me healthy stakes....:-)))) so I can save the glads.....:-)))))

Susan

The glads don't winter here so I have to dig them out in fall and replant in spring and I take the stakes out and restake each year when they come up. But I take the stakes out of the iris too and they do winter. You don't know where the bloom stalks will come up next year so you have to move them with the blooms.

I think adding stakes to irises already in the ground is a bit easier because the irises always put their fans up at the same end of the rhizome. With glads I worry about puncturing the bulbs if/as/when I add stakes to bulbs already in the ground. Maybe the thing to do (even though the climate doesn't require it) is to pull the glads and then put them back in the ground again in the spring. That way I can plant the stake at the same time and not worry about destroying the corm. That also gets around the issue of the multiplying glads simply being too crowded. Of course it requires me to give up a bit of my lackadaisical/lazy behavior, too, but I think the garden will look better.

Susan

Realistically, though, do you WANT or NEED all of that extra, really unnecessary work every year? How long to you honestly think you'll keep that up until the glads find a new home (probably in the landfill!). Kim

Okay, of course you are right. Nothing I have ever dug up has ever ended up back in the ground the next year. I have to dig up and replant immediately or it never happens. However plants never ever go to landfill....maybe to one of the many debris piles that eventually become compost.

We will see. Yesterday I yanked up several clumps that were annoying me and they may or may not end up back in the ground. Some of them can find places along naturally occurring stakes (i.e. some of the new cattle panel arches I put in this year) or along exterior property fences. The rest will just add to the compost piles....sigh....Reality is sooooo irritating sometimes.

Susan

I'm surprised it was mentioned that irises need to be staked too. I've never staked a single one and they're all upright. I have the reblooming kind so they do come up at odd times like October or November. It works for me! I put them in such a way that they're between other plants and don't hide any other plants.

Ingrid

Ingrid, I would have said exactly what you did until this year. I put in about a dozen brand new antique irises, and two of them were young and unsteady enough that I added thin bamboo stakes just to keep their young and beautiful blooms upright. The irises that I have had that have been in the ground for years on end never ever need staking, and I suspect the new ones won't when they are two-year olds. However, I have another dozen new historics arriving this fall and won't be surprised if they need some support in their first year here.

Susan

There are also short glads. I don't know if you are interested in the shorter ones, 2 feet tall or so, but they are beautiful (especially the "vintage" varieties). I grow them in pots and they do ok without staking. I got mine from Old House Gardens.

Such a good idea....short glads. I have clump of them in a very pale pink and you are right that they are less susceptible to falling over....except that when you (I mean "I") leave them in the ground for a few years; then they still push each other over because they are too crowded....

Bad bad glads....

Susan

I grow glads among my roses. They need no care, and are beautiful...so what if I have to stake them. Really, not that much work IMHO.

They do multiply like crazy, but I just 'weed' out the extras
, or give them away.

Susan, you are such a nut! "bad, bad glads" I think that's why I appreciate you so much! LOL! Kim

Glad to make you glad, Kim......:-))))

Susan
who pulled up a few more dozen glads today.

My tall bearded iris have always needed staking. Any wind and/or rain and the blooms are so heavy it sends them to the ground otherwise. We had so much rain this spring that I even had roses that broke from the weight of the water collecting in the blooms.

Lets face it, gardens are a TON of work! But we do what it takes to make our own little plots our own image of paradise.

you can always get reblooming irises, too...!

and then there are penstemons and ixia and various other things...

"we do what it takes to make our own little plots our own image of paradise."

AMEN to THAT !!!!!
Susan

Susan, you know the metal (kind of like heavy wire) fold-up scalloped fencing you can buy at Wal-Mart? I buy the taller one and in green, not white, and take it apart into four fold-up sections. I stick it in the ground making a square shape to surround anything I plant that may flop over. The green blends in, so you don't notice it in a closely planted bed. I have also used three panels and formed it in a triangle.

Glads are not invasive here, in fact tend to disappear in a few years, probably due to heat and humidity causing them to rot over time. I wish they reproduced a little more aggressively here.

Thanks again for all the input.

What I've been doing this week is digging up clumps that are kinda out in the middle by themselves and then staking some singles in place, and replanting the rest along fences (so they can be zip-tied next year as necessary) behind roses (which will also help to keep them from flopping over. We will see. I definitely am not going to acquire any more glads, but some of the ones I have are going to be repositioned and one particularly garish one (which of course multiplied like a rabbit) is being given away as rapidly as I can find takers....:-))))

No MORE glads for this gurl.

Susan,

I do not grow garden glads (I find them too much work too, and the flowers are too showy, I think they compete with, rather than compliment roses), I grow Byzantine glads (g. byzantinus). They are shorter and the flowers much smaller, airier and daintier than the garden hybrids. I love them. I wish I had a problem with them spreading out of control (I wouldn't mind that), but they are not terribly aggressive... They never need staking.

Masha

On a blog, at the end of a post, there is a little sign that displays the number of comments (e.g. "10 comments"), click on that, and you will see everybody's comments, scroll to the end and you should see the "Post Comment" window.

And did I mention hummers love them? Also, they begin blooming in early April, long before penstemon or nepeta, and right after my Dutch iris are done. The spikiness is nice to see.

{{gwi:291353}}

Oh Masha, thank you for clarifying the glad situation. I'm going to have to look up those g. byzaneinus.

And also for the comments situation. I have figured out how to post a comment, I just don't know how to be anything except Anonymous. Seems like people post as "anonymous" when they are ashamed of what they are going to say....:-))))

I click on your blog every day. It balances the other daily click on the New York Times.....:-)))))

Susan

Susan, you are so funny... I am truly honored to be mentioned in the same sentence as the New York Times :). I don't mind Anonymous, there are lots of techie things I can't figure out either, if you sign your name I will know it is you.

Well, that works for me, and I'm glad I can make you smile since you make me smile every day.

And, look at this: a whole world of species glads that I had never really realized was there

Here is a link that might be useful: species glads

Those glads are charming, Masha! I'll have to look for some of those!

Seil, thank you, I hope you find them!

Susan, that link is wicked. Some of them look like orchids, really beautiful. G. venustus really caught my attention, along with about 10 others. I better go put my wallet away... But if you get any, let me know how they do for you :)

Masha

I adore glads. I accidentally left some short ones in the ground where I planted irises, and when they came up, the iris leaves supported them! Now I only plant the shorter species type and plant them with irises. No staking, and no goofy looking foliage growing at odd angles. The skinny glad leaves get lost in the iris foliage.
Renee