With refererence to the last two posts regarding winter hardiness the answer is yes and no. While I'm sure that winter hardy gladiolus cultivars would be willingly accepted by the North American gardening public, I'm not aware of species in the genus that would provide the hardiness rating 4/5. It should be borne in mind that this represents a large proportion of sales territory for dutch bulb exporters in particular. And as to the second comment, as someone who has been actively involved in the Netherlands bulb export industry for most of my career I can certainly confirm that while the dutch would not like to lose any more of their gladiolus sales than they have already,(bulb exports to the U.S. have been steadily declining for the last twelve years, gladiolus have been among the hardest hit) given the concentrated production on relatively little hectareage that the dutch work with, cross contamination of the field from one year to the next is a valid, and potentially costly concern. P.S. I've been told by my dutch colleague's that the orders for gladiolus in 2007 have been higher that at any tine since 1992!!!! regards David