This year I’m trialing various garden glads. This week a form new to me has started to bloom. These are sold under the name Glamini Glads. Experienced gardeners generally have plenty of stories to tell about the absurdities of the mass-distribution catalogs: the hyperbole, the misidentifications, the outrageous colors (blue tulips. roses and dahlias, anyone?), the dubious hardiness claims. Why this happens is beyond me because, in most cases, the plants themselves deserve better than this shabby treatment. The catalog entry for these Glamini glads provides a good example. It shows what seem to be typical garden glads cut down and stuffed into a container; such foliage as can be seen is suspiciously short, and the stumpy, graceless inflorescences squirm artlessly upwards as if to distance themselves from the deception taking place below them. Forget all of that. In the garden these Glamini glads are really graceful and beautiful. They measure over 30” high with three inch flowers. The flower colors are appealing: they remind me of sherbet colors. Count these as a good addition to our garden flora (at least until the thrips find them). Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/