Companion Planting With Gladiolus: Plants That Grow Well With Gladiolus

glad companions
glad companions
(Image credit: Alex Stork)

Gladiolus is a wildly popular flowering plant that often makes its way into floral arrangements. As well as bouquets, gladiolus looks amazing in flower beds and along garden borders. What are some good companion plants for gladiolus? Keep reading to learn more about plants that grow well with gladiolus.

Companion Plants for Gladiolus

Perhaps the best companion plants for gladiolus are, believe it or not, more gladiolus plants. Gladiolus is not a cut-and-come-again flower. Instead, it grows its flowers from the bottom up along long leafy spears. When it’s used for flower arrangements, these spears are usually cut off whole. In order to have a full summer’s worth of blossoms, it’s best to plant your gladiolus bulbs (also known as corms) in succession. Starting a few weeks before your area’s average last frost, plant a new bunch of gladiolus bulbs every two weeks. Keep this up until midsummer. This way, you’ll have new plants growing and new flowers blooming all the way through the summer and into the fall.

What to Plant with Gladiolus

Unfortunately, gladiolus plants don’t have any particular benefits for their neighbors the way that some flowering plants do. They can, however, be planted with other bright flowering plants to make for a truly spectacular splash of color in the garden. Some good flowering companion plants for gladiolus include zinnias and dahlias. Gladiolus plants like sun and well-drained, sandy soil, and plants that grow well with gladiolus need the same kind of soil conditions. Really, basically, any plants sharing the same requirements will work. Gladiolus plants also make a great and colorful border around vegetable gardens. As long as your garden (or at least the area around it) has sandy, well-draining soil and receives full sun exposure, your plants should be happy.

Liz Baessler
Senior Editor

The only child of a horticulturist and an English teacher, Liz Baessler was destined to become a gardening editor. She has been with Gardening Know how since 2015, and a Senior Editor since 2020. She holds a BA in English from Brandeis University and an MA in English from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. After years of gardening in containers and community garden plots, she finally has a backyard of her own, which she is systematically filling with vegetables and flowers.