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
There can be few flowers that are as versatile as dahlias. So it is no surprise, that, despite having spent a hefty part of the later 20th Century in the fashion doldrums, their star has been in the ascendant for a couple of decades now. Thoroughly socially rehabilitated in the late 1990s, by the liberal inclusion of superstar dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ in the fashionable hot borders and tropical planting of the time, the entire genus has not looked back since. While still associated with large blooms and show-bench perfection, recent breeding efforts have created increasingly garden-friendly plants. Varieties coming out of New Zealand have been back-crossed with wild dahlias from the mountains of Mexico and central America to create beautiful single flowers, over dark, finely divided foliage. A marked and elegant contrast to some of their predecessors, which, to be fair, were occasionally somewhat lumpen.
Breeders have also cottoned on to the fact that most people have small gardens and not much time, et voilà, several series of dinky dahlias. These have all the flower-power and looks of the big ones, but at under 60cm high they are a great prospect for pots and the front of the border. When the flower first appeared in Europe in 1789, as part of a consignment of plant material sent to Spain, it was something new, delicate and exciting. Three species arrived and they were passed among botanic gardens and to great houses, where they rapidly demonstrated themselves to be wildly promiscuous and hugely variable due to the octoploid genome and tendency for bits of genetic material to move around spontaneously.
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
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