Little ‘Boone’ Gladiolus is Making it Big

Amy’s ‘Boone’ — one or two is all you need!

A huge bouquet of ‘Boone’ from our micro-farms was gracing our office table when an email arrived reminding us that even one ‘Boone’ can be a thrill. “I just wanted to pass along a photo of my lovely ‘Boone’ gladiolus,” our good customer Amy Darnell of Columbia, Missouri, wrote. “I am so, so glad I bought it!”

‘Boone’ glows on the cover of Fine Gardening, Oct. 2012.

Then the very next day the October issue of one of our favorite magazines, Fine Gardening, arrived with a big beautiful clump of ‘Boone’ on the cover! At first we didn’t recognize it because it looks vivid orange in the cover photo rather than the soft apricot it is in our gardens, but we know how hard it is to get flower colors just right. And although the accompanying article says it’s hardy in zones 8-10 only and will probably need staking — which is usually true of mainstream glads — ‘Boone’ is a hardy perennial here in our zone-6a gardens, and we never stake it.

‘Boone’s cousin ‘Carolina Primrose’ (shown here in our micro-farms)
is also zone-6 hardy and never needs staking.