Slow Life » Dahlia

Val Bourne’s Dahlias

jonathandenby — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:20:21 +0000

“It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”

Val Bourne has been a dahlia grower all her life. She’s not just any old dahlia grower like me, she’s on the RHS dahlia panel and they don’t come any grander than that in the world of dahlias. And so I was surprised to hear her confess today that her dahlias have failed this year. It seems that, in her garden in the Cotswolds, they suffered from hot days and cold nights in April and then a couple of late frosts.

This kind of news gives a warm glow to those of us in the cold, wet, north, whose dahlias have been in constant flower since May and have produced an abundant crop of cutting flowers. Ours have never been better or healthier. The truth, of course, has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with luck. I’ve been lucky, she hasn’t.

Val Bourne has concluded that she planted her dahlias out much too early and has resoved not to put them in the garden in future before the middle of June. I think this is much too extreme. Our regime is to pot up the dahlia tubers in February/March and put them in the cold frames. Our cold frames are twice the normal height to give plenty of room for growth. By about mid May, most of the plants will have grown well and developed flower buds. We plant out these strong plants then. We give the weaker plants more time to come on in the cold frames. This way, we invariably get flowers outisde by the end of May and can start cutting in June. This regime works well for us and I don’t think I’d abandon it just because I had some very bad luck with the weather. Think on, Val.

A New Dahlia

jonathandenby — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:52:07 +0000

This is a new Dahlia and I’m really quite excited about it. We have grown it from seed and it appears to be a totally new variety- a tree dahlia cross. It’s much taller than most hybrids, growing on a single stem to more than five feet. The leaves are unusually large, some measuring ten inches in length. These are qualities which I think it has taken from a tree dahlia; but it has come to maturity much earlier than a tree dahlia would, and has a striking red flower whereas the flowers on tree dahlias tend to be pale blue or mauve and rather insignificant. This plant is vigorous, with 13 flower heads. It is also scented, so it may be crossed with red scented variety which Jack Gott developed two or three years ago when he worked here, and which has the preliminary name of Margaret Denby. I haven’t yet thought of a name for this new one, but it’s certainly one to watch.

Dahlias Yewbarrow House slideshow

jonathandenby — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:44:56 +0000

This video shows more than 100 varieties of Dahlias which have grown in our garden at Yewbarrow House. For most plants this number would be enough to form a National Collection, but the varieties of Dahlias can’t be numbered – this is because they don’t necessarily grow true from seed so that if you plant a 1000 seeds you could get hundreds of different varieties, some of which will be entirely new. The possibilities are endless.

The reason we have had so many Dahlias at Yewbarrow House is that we were privileged to have had one of the world’s leading Dahlia experts, Jack Gott, looking after the garden for us. Sadly, since June last year we have had to manage without Jack’s wisdom and expertise, so this year Dahlias won’t play the leading role in the garden. This video is a tribute to what Jack achieved.

Putting the Dahlias to Bed

jonathandenby — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 10:34:30 +0000

This is the time of year when all the gardening columns are giving advice about shutting the garden down for the winter. One burning question is- do we ned to go to the trouble of lifting dahlias and storing them indoors? If you’ve got only a few choice specimens you’d be mad not to lift them, as the effort is minimal and once they’re inside they don’t need any attention until the spring, not even watering and you can be confident that they’ll be free from harm. But when, like me, you have hundreds, it’s a major chore and there’s a big temptation to leave them in the ground and take the risk. But the danger isn’t just from frost- in our garden there are mice, squirrels, moles and badgers to contend with, as well as the danger of the tubers rotting away in water logged soil. And even if they survive the pests, the frosts and the damp the plants will be slow to emerge and unlikely to flower before July. So for us the effort is worth it- and if we put the tubers in the cold frame in March we can take plenty of cuttings and get them planted out with some already in bloom by the end of May. As this photo shows, they have some rather splendid quarters in which to while away the winter.

The Frost Resistant Dahlia

jonathandenby — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:36:26 +0000

We’ve had all kinds of weather thrown at us in the last two weeks- including several severe frosts. The frosts have seen off most of our Dahlias but we’ve nothing to complain about as some of the plants have been producing flowers continuously for five months. Dahlias are well known for being susceptible to the first frosts, but some of the Dahlias in our garden are made of sterner stuff. These are the species tree Dahlias, which have not only survived the frosts but, in the warm spell of the last few days, have shown vigorous new growth. We have three types of tree dahlias in the garden- Imperialis, Tenuicaulis and Excelsa. All are well over 6 feet in height and the Excelsa and the Tenuicaulis have been flowering for months now. The Imperialis, which is the largest, hasn’t flowered as yet and is unlikely to- in fact it has only flowered outside in this garden once- and that was after the exceptionally hot summer of 2006, when it came into flower on December 6th. Unfortunately it seems that not all species Dahlias are frost resistant- the smaller varieties, such as Coccinea have succumbed, just like the hybrids.

Georgeous Gladdies

jonathandenby — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:43:53 +0000

Gladioli have been out of fashion for as long as I can remember. They got a reputation for being too showy and Dame Edna put paid to any hopes of a revival. But I love them and in January I ordered a large batch for a show garden at Tatton which, in the end, didn’t happen. So at short notice I needed to find a home for 400 gladioli. I planted about half of them here at Yewbarrow House, putting some among the large leaved Canna Musifolia (musifolia means “banana-leaved, so they are huge). This created a very effective display as the flowers of the gladioli seemed to belong to the cannas, causing many a visitor to do a double take. The other 200 plants I used at the Damson Dene hotel, planting them along the border of the Dahlia garden, where they look stunning. The gladioli have been in flower for a good two months (no doubt helped by the gloomy weather) which is fabulous value.

“Graceful Dahlias” 1910 Style

jonathandenby — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:43:02 +0000

An item in this week’s Country Life headed “Graceful Dahlias” began as follows:

“It is interesting, and not a little curious, to note the change in public taste concerning the dahlia. Ten years ago the large, double show and fancy varieties with their symmetrical dense heads of cone-like petals, were most in demand, yet they are seldom seen at any exhibition now. At the Royal Horticultural Society’s Hall on Tuesday last Dahlias were very largely shown, yet very few of the type mentioned above were to be seen”.

This is curious, I thought. Why is Country Life, which is normally so sniffy about dahlias suddenly taking them to heart? It was then that I noticed that the article was headed “100 Years Ago” and was in fact a re-print from the edition of 3rd September 1910. During the last 100 years dahlias have gone in and out of fashion and it is only in the last ten years that they have become acceptable again. Well, in the case of Country Life readers acceptable if they have dark leaves. It would be interesting to know the names of the varieties being exhibited at the RHS Hall in 1910- such are the changes in fashion that I doubt if many of them are available today.

Jack’s Black Magic

jonathandenby — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:07:50 +0000

Jack Gott, the Dahlia guru, who so generously named his stunning new “petite” Dahlia after his colleague’s baby daughter (see yesterday’s posting) has developed another stunner, pictured here. We have named it “Yewbarrow Black”. Black is the Holy Grail for plant breeders, because a true black is difficult to achieve. Most “blacks” are in fact deep purples or reds. This Dahlia is exceptionally dark. The most popular dark-leafed Dahlia is the Bishop of Llandaff, which we grow here, together with other dark-leafed varieties. These plants are hybrids, which don’t come true from seed, the corollary of which is that the seed will often produce a completely new plant. Here at Yewbarrow House we have dozens of different varieties of Dahlias growing side by side, which bees and insects spend the summer busily cross-pollinating. Jack Gott has patiently collected the seed, watched it germinate and brought on the new plants in the trial beds behind the potting shed. This has produced some stunners, including the darkly exotic “Yewbarrow Black”.

A New Dahlia- Lilianna W

jonathandenby — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:30:15 +0000

This photo is of a new kind of Dahlia, one you don’t see very often, but one which is going to become very popular, I’d guess. There are several names for it – petite; dwarf; patio; container and I’m sure that in due course one of these will become the norm. The Dahlia in the photo is very rare indeed; it is a new variety, only just registered with the RHS at Wisley and has been given the name Lilianna W.

There is a story behind the name, which concerns Matt Wilczynski and his wife Magda. Matt and Magda came to this country from Poland 7 years ago, before Poland joined the EU, when it cost £700 to purchase a visa. They both worked for me at the Newby Bridge Hotel, saving every penny, and working every hour of available overtime, to earn enough money to fulfil their dream of building a house in Poland. In 2008 they had their first baby, a girl, and just before Christmas that year they returned to Poland and started work on building their dream house. During his time here Matt used to help out in the garden at Yewbarrow House. Matt is a natural in the garden and he earned the admiration and affection of Jack Gott, our gardener. So much so, that when Jack bred the new variety of Dahlia, he named it after Matt’s newly born daughter, Lilianna.
Now Matt is back in the garden, helping out for the summer, earning the money he needs to finish off the house. Regrettably, Jack, who is a genius with Dahlias, is so busy with his Dahlia business (JRG Dahlias) that he no longer has the time to work here- so Matt is looking after Lilianna, and all the other Dahlia progeny- on his own.

Surprising Survivors Part 1- Dahlia Imperialis

jonathandenby — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 09:04:59 +0000

“Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we’d all have frozen to death” (Mark Twain)
It felt like that last winter in our garden, with night after night at minus 10 C. Dahlias aren’t supposed to survive cold like that. Although we lift the dahlias in our display beds we leave the dahlias in the borders in the ground over the winter. In a normal winter in Grange, when we get about 30 mild frosts the dahlias will survive because a frosty night is usually followed by a sunny day which prevents the ground from freezing solid. But last winter the frost stayed there all day and the ground did freeze. Even so, about half of the dahlias which we had left in the ground came through- the most surprising of which is this Dahlia Imperialis, which has already reached 4 feet in height and is on its way to reaching its full height of 10 feet.