Dahlias There are fashions in flowers as there are in most things. I was thinking about the fashion highs and lows of the dahlia last weekend as I was digging tubers from one of our cutting garden beds. One entire plot is now devoted to dahlias, because there is simply no better cut flower, and we get flowers for such a long time.
I was reminded of my childhood garden where my grandfather grew dahlias in rows and tied them to rigid stakes. So I looked up 'This week in your Garden' by Waratah from 1951... 'It is your own affair how hard you disbud dahlias,' say the authors, with an authoritarian tone that might make the gardener who had never considered disbudding their dahlia tremble. 'Don't disbud severely and feed heavily,' continues the stern advice. 'Distortion comes from that sort of treatment. Don't allow dahlia branches to swing in the wind. Nine inches is enough freedom. Keep all below that tied securely, but not too tightly.'
Underneath the rules and regulations it's clear that the authors are fans of dahlias too. That set me wondering what Vita Sackville-West and other influential authors thought of dahlias. Vita and her husband, Harold loved the white one in their famous White Garden at Sissinghurst. The use of dahlias in the whole garden has been extended since their time so the garden remains colourful in autumn as it is in high summer.
Christopher Lloyd, in his garden at Great Dixter, uses dahlias to add colour to the greenery of his vegetables. 'Thousands of dahlias are available in a wide range of colours and shapes,' he enthuses, and loves their colours for cutting flowers.
Penelope Hobhouse recommends the extravagant forms for massed (and carefully staked) grandiose bedding schemes. Those with enough character, such as 'Bishop of Llandaff' with its metallic bronze-purple foliage, 'make eloquent contributions to mixed plantings' she says. In his Sundial Garden, the Prince of Wales was persuaded to plant an entirely black and white scheme. In summer the beds are packed with white aquilegia, poppies, violas, black grasses, black-stemmed dogwood and black-leafed 'Bishop of Llandaff' dahlias disbudded of their red flowers!
Claude Monet loved dahlias too. He loved to paint them amongst other flowers. Gradually the flowers assumed more importance than the figures, which ultimately disappeared from his canvases completely. In his Women Amongst the Dahlias (1875) the women are only two little heads bobbing inside an enormous wave of yellow and orange flowers. Michael McCoy loves 'a gorgeous dahlia named 'Meadow Lea' in his orange and lime border. My favourite quote about dahlias comes from another local, Marylyn Abbott, who writes about her famous garden, Kennerton Green in Mittagong NSW, in her book 'Gardens of Plenty'. 'My conversion from mild acceptance to admiration of dahlias came after my visit to Kasteel Hex in Belgium,' Marylyn writes, 'where they were planted as a Berlin Wall of flowers to protect vegetables from the free world.'
She goes on to advise creating 'late season height with tall dahlias, using colours too outspoken for a considered border. Be dashing and try large, bold, purple, red and white tipped 'Tartan'.' So the humble dahlia is enjoying a renaissance, with hybridists such as Keith Hammett in New Zealand doing excellent work with exciting new varieties. The Hammett Collection was released in late August 1999, and are all still in the Yates range. Keith's dwarf dahlias 'Baby Dahls' are a response to changing times. They can be sold as flowering pot plants along with regular nursery plants - no staking is required, or disbudding. I wonder what the writers of 'Waratah' would have to say about the dahlia half a century on?
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