Surprising Survivors Part 1- Dahlia Imperialis

“Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we’d all have frozen to death” (Mark Twain)
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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.