US (FL): Fort Myers, once the gladiolus capital of the world
Gladiolus bulbs, or corms, were first planted in Iona in 1935. Two successive winter freezes in central Florida had driven gladiolus growers into the Fort Myers area. Cradled in the warm arms of the Caloosahatchee and the Gulf of Mexico, Iona, named by an early Scottish settler for the Ionian Islands of Scotland, was considered to be the most consistently frost-free area in the United States.
The first flower growers to locate in this vast agricultural area were Rex Beach Farms, Pinellas Gladiolus and the A. & W. Bulb Company. (Modern-day Gladiolus Drive was originally an access road to the gladiolus fields.)
Within 10 years, 30 local gladiolus growers were cultivating over 2,500 acres, employing more than 1,000 workers, and shipping almost 45 million dozen gladioli annually.
One of the most successful of these growers was Norman Cox, founder and first president of the Florida Gladiolus Brokers Association and president of Gulf Coast Farms, Inc. A native of Evansville, Indiana, Cox began in the flower business in 1931 as a florist supplies salesman. Ten years later, he came to Fort Myers with his wife and two small children, put all their savings as a down payment on a piece of land just south of Pine Island Road along Matlacha Pass in North Fort Myers, and set to work manually clearing the land for a gladiolus farm.
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