Dazzling Dahlias

Dazzling Dahlias. With so many varieties, from elegant dwarf plants to garden show-offs, dahlia-mania is back and deserves celebration. WORDS: Naomi Slade

Dahlia-mania ensued with more and more fancy and exciting types being cultivated and, as a result, there are now around 60,000 named varieties of dahlia in the world. If you fancy a little dahliamania of your own, you may still be able to pick up pots of dwarf dahlias in full spate in a decent garden centre. And it if definitely time to order in some catalogues and, come autumn, choose tubers and rooted cuttings for delivery next spring! Generally, they are quite easy to grow. If they don’t come up, inspect carefully – assuming that the tuber was alive when it was planted, the most likely reason for this is slugs. They are a total menace with dahlias. I don’t like to use slug pellets, so my trick this year has been to keep the tubers potted until as late as possible and kept up on the deck or elevated onto a table, so slug damage can easily be spotted and the culprit banished. I then planted them out in warm dry weather and lavished them with care and spot-watering.

And with the molluscs at bay, there are three things that will boost your chances of a spectacular display: Lots of food, water and sunshine. Right now, feed your dahlias regularly and often with high-potash feed such as tomato food, and deadhead as soon as the flowers go over. The more flowers you cut the more will come, so cut them, arrange them and enjoy them – there is a dahlia for every taste! Dahlias by Naomi Slade is published by Pavilion on 2 August 2018, £25

sources: Berkshire Life, August 2018