Delightful darling dahlias

With a multitude of different colours, shapes and sizes, dahlias bring life and beauty back to your garden for the summer and autumn months.

The diversity of dahlias allow you to use them in many different aspects of your landscape design from low growing border plants to stately background plantings that may reach six feet in height.

Dahlias grow and flower best in a well-drained, sunny site. They like warm weather and will not tolerate frost.

Plant dahlia tubers outdoors after your last frost date, when the soil has warmed. Most dahlias will begin flowering by midsummer. Plant your tuber down twice the depth of the size of the tuber.

A show-stopper firework of a dahlia, Tahiti Sunrise will have your garden border glowing. It is such a fabulous cocktail of colour with its profusion of spectacular bright red flowers blending to yellow at their heart and delicately tipped in purple.

Bred for baskets, pots, and edges, Pablo is a short dahlia that displays warm, cheerful four-inch blooms in abundance from midsummer until frost.

It is a vibrant, compact and a well-branched dahlia with beautiful dark green foliage that produces lovely salmon and yellow bicolour blooms all season. The fully double decorative flowers are bright yellow with salmon pink tips.

Its lush compound leaves are rich green with toothed margins. The colourful flowers appear continuously and are attractive to bees and butterflies. Remove the old buds from spent flowers to encourage heavier flowering.

Let's introduce the Creme de Cassis dahlia to you! The moment these wine-coloured buds begin to open, you'll be hooked. The deeper creme de cassis shade on the reverse of each petal has a quite sophisticated and striking effect. This darling dahlia will charm guests in the garden and welcome visitors to your home in a fresh-cut arrangement. It's a highly productive plant, especially with proper deadheading. These intricately beautiful blooms are about three feet tall.

This has huge pristine white flowers that really light up the garden during the summer months. The elegant, enormous white flowers of this plant have a hint of a creamy colour at their centre. This is the flower used for a 14th wedding anniversary.

This variety produces giant primrose yellow blooms. Plant it in your garden and enjoy one of the most spectacular show nature can offer.

 

There will be a free talk by Margaret Griffins on Saturday 22 February on summer flowering bulbs. All attendees will get a ten per cent off voucher to spend in Griffins Garden Centre and Homestore in Dripsey.