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

More in the Dahlia genus

• 
  Dahlia 'Clearview Cameron' (C)
• 
  Dahlia 'Croydon Jumbo' (D)Dahlia
• 
  Dahlia 'Elizabeth Snowden' (Col)
• 
  Dahlia 'Katie's Velvet' (Col)Dahlia
• 
  Dahlia 'LB Michael Braithwaite' (D)
• Dahlia 'Amazing Grace' (Misc)
• Dahlia 'Aurora's Kiss' (Ba)
• Dahlia 'Black Diamond' (Ba)