Dahlias, dahlias, dahlias…

Rewind 10 years and I was planning my October wedding. Back then I had so little idea about flowers and their seasonality so headed confidently to meet my florist with a vision for a bouquet full of peonies. My lovely florist had to bring me quickly back down to earth explaining how difficult and costly they would be to source at that time of year so we went back to the drawing board. Along with roses and hydrangeas, one of the focal flowers she suggested using were dahlias, particularly for the buttonholes. Truth be told, I was horrified, having only seen the garish varieties filling garden centres. You may know the ones I mean, big, bright, yellow, red and orange explosions of colour! It turned out that I didn’t need to worry and she sourced beautiful white and pastel pink varieties that were used throughout the florals. My eyes were opened…

However, other than our wedding dahlias, I was still only ever seeing the same old dahlias I’d always known and disliked until I really started getting into gardening around 5 years ago. I was listening to the ‘Let’s grow girls’ podcast where Nicole and Sarah were raving about them and I knew I must be missing something. I was in for an education. I googled ‘café au lait’ and the rest is history. Discovering her muted tones of peachy perfection was the start of my love for dahlias and part of the snowball effect that led me to flower farming. 

I grew just 5 tubers in 2022, 3 Café au Lait, 1 Blackjack and 1 Sweet Nathalie (pictured above). I tried a few extras in 2023 and grew almost 20 different varieties last year. This year, I’ve gone big though and last Monday, with the help of my Mum and her partner, we put 165 in the ground, with just a few late additions to be added this week taking us close to 200. They’re already sprouting and I’m hoping for an abundance of blooms and rainbow of colours.

They normally bloom all the way from mid-July to late October, weather (and slug!) dependent and I’ll be running pick your own events during this time along with some ‘pick and arrange’ workshops. I’ve even got a few pumpkins growing so may run a pumpkin arrangement workshop too where I imagine autumnal coloured dahlias would feature heavily.

If you keep scrolling, you’ll see some of my favourites and get any idea of the beauties that will be waiting to be snipped later in the year. You can also find the link to subscribe to my newsletter to be the first to hear when we’re opening the gates for PYO and workshops.

 Let me know your favourites and I hope to see you in the field soon x

One of my all time favourites these days is Totally Tangerine – ironic given my disdain for the garish orange dahlias of old but she is a beauty!

I’ve never grown ‘Peaches’ myself before but I saw her on my travels in South Africa at ‘Adene’s flower farm’ and I can’t wait to see how she performs here. I’ve bought lots of tubers from Dahlia Beach so we should have Peaches in abundance.

I grew ‘Paso Doble’ last year and whilst her flowers were a delight in a beautiful pastel yellow she didn’t have the strongest stems. My Dad always used to wear a yellow hat so I’m giving a different pastel yellow lady a go in a nod to him. Fingers crossed for Caramel Antique!

I’m really looking forward to the blooms of Rip City, Soulman and Veronne’s Obsidian. I never have enough of the deep, dark reds when it gets to the Autumn so making sure that’s not the case this year with plenty of options.

You can see pictures of some of the rest underneath. Hopefully I’ve covered lots of the various styles of dahlia with a good range of colours too but I’m absolutely positive, there’ll still be plenty of other varieties I want to add to the collection this time next year, there always is!