Dahlias 2025

@Butterfly6 , our last home garden was North facing too. Our back garden here faces East so similar conditions as you.

 

Thank you @CatDouch. Waltzing Matilda’s a delight, all the flowers are different in their colourways and the colours change as they age. Here’s another one.

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A new D. Waltzing Matilda flower, almost totally magenta, and more petals.

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Dahlia "Rocket" nice simple single flower and dark foliage.

 

At this time of the year, dahlias are definitely the flowers that give me most joy.



Caitlins Joy



Cafe Au Lait



Wizard of Oz



Jowey Winnie, although I think it was mislabelled and is something else!



Burnt Sugar



Cornel Brons



Copper Boy

 

Doris Day. A cactus variety bred in the 50’s.

 

"Wishes and Dreams" is proving very popular with the bees. This is my first Dahlia; I bought it as a tuber last year, it produced a couple of flowers and I left it in the pot over winter. I was really sure it had rotted away after all the wet; the piece of tuber showing above the soil was soft and waterlogged when I poked at it in the spring. But then it put out 3 sprouts, and I read some advice to pinch them out so did that, and it's now covered in flower buds.

 

Apricot Desire - a water lily type.

 

I’m so jealous of these beautiful dahlias. I love them but cannot seem to grow them here now. I believe @Star gaze Lily had a Cafe Au Lait dahlia which was stunning. Wonder if it has survived this year?

 

My vegetable garden is slowly being taken over by dahlias, every year I add more as they provide me with cut flowers for months.



Beauty Queen



Caitlins Joy



Cafe Au Lait



Wizard of Oz



Cornel Brons



Burnt Sugar

 

Dahlia coccinea first flower on this seedling.

Slightly different colour to the other seedling.
First flower of first seedling.


2nd flower of first seedling.


The symmetry is different for each flower, improving slightly with each successive flower.
I found this podcast
and in the first 10 minutes Alan Gray comments that he allows dahlia seedlings 3 years for the flower to settle down.
I listen to part of each one of these roughly monthly podcasts depending on weather and what else is going on.

 

Last year I bought Dahlia "Totally Tangerine" and decided I didn't like it. Though it was orangish it also used a copy-cat name and the colours were messy. My dahlias got off to a bad start this year. Some got evicted from their usual over-wintering space in the spare bedroom to make room for human visitors, then had to take their chances in the greenhouse as soon as there was room. They took ages getting started and lots of labels got muddled in the process of finding them spaces. The first to get properly underway was TT and it began with enthusiasm. It has kept going all summer and flowered generously. The orange/yellow/red petals blended beautifully with surrounding plants - Crocosmia, a peachy Hollyhock, a small pinkish red hot poker and almost all the other surrounding border plants, including 'David Howard'. I had to deadhead several times and it is still flowering happily with lots of buds to come. It has made a good sized clump and looks all prepared for next year. So why is it that I somehow still have no fondness for it?

 

It's funny isn't it @ButtercupDays - I also have had plants that "do the job" but don't fill me with joy.
Crocosmia Lucifer, various perennial asters, indigofera and others that I've consigned to the Great compost heap in the sky.

 

I'm beginning to feel like that about Geranium Rozanne.

 

I've never liked that G. Rozanne. I don't like the colour of blue, and especially don't like the white centre. There's no way I'd entertain it in a garden.
We're all different though.
I'm giving up on dahlias again. Too much faff - especially the overwintering carry on. It's too hit and miss here. The relentless slug population we have all year makes it very depressing too. Much as I like them, and the symmetry of the very pleated varieties, there are easier plants that give me just as much pleasure -without the effort.