Dahlia 'Red Alert' (Ba) — Bushy, clump-forming, tuberous perennial

Overview

Dahlia 'Red Alert' (Ba) is a bushy, clump-forming, tuberous perennial bedding in the genus Dahlia, part of the Asteraceae family, with green, occasionally dark-leaved foliage. Dahlia 'Red Alert' (Ba) grows best in full sun, and tolerates loam soils and neutral pH. Its UK hardiness is rated H4. Suggested uses include borders, containers and cut flowers.

About

Dahlia 'Red Alert' is a cultivar of the Dahlia genus, which comprises perennial plants with tuberous roots and finely dissected leaves. This bushy, clump-forming herbaceous perennial thrives in full sun and prefers a south-facing, sheltered aspect with moist but well-drained loam soil of neutral pH. Suitable for borders, containers, and cut flowers, it blooms during the summer and autumn seasons. Cultivation involves growing in fertile, humus-rich soil and pinching out the growing tip to promote bushy growth, with staking recommended for taller varieties. In colder regions, tubers should be lifted after the first frost and stored frost-free over winter.

About the genus

Dahlias come from the high meadows of Mexico, and somewhere in that heritage is the explanation for how they behave here: tender to frost, hungry, generous beyond all reason. No other plant gives you quite so much for so little. One tuber, planted after the last frost, becomes a shrub's worth of flowers by August — and the more you cut, the more they come.The range is faintly ridiculous. Tight pompoms, spiky cactus types, singles the bees adore, dinner-plates the size of your face. Whatever your garden's mood, there is a dahlia that agrees with it, which is probably why every generation falls out of love with them and then, a decade later, falls straight back in.They're at their best when much of the garden is winding down — late summer into autumn, flowering hard until the first frost calls time. I think of them as the encore. And they always play it.

Written by Henry