Hello!
We moved into our house nine years ago, and excited by the prospect of having my first proper garden, I promptly went out and spent a small fortune on every plant I could get my hands on. The result was a little muddled to say the least and finally I have worked out what grows well with the least effort. The garden is looking at it's best at the moment, so I shall try and take some snaps to share with you.
One of the plants I bought, was a peachy coloured Dahlia. Dahlias were seen as a bit of an unfashionable bloom a few years ago, and it's only recently that they seem to have become trendy again, and I'm seeing them all over Pinterest! I love cactus and pom pom Dahlias, which are what you can see in the pictures above - -they make me feel nostalgic, as when I was little I remember my grandma always having a brightly coloured bunch in a vase during the summer.
I adore them for so many reasons - the divine colours, the fact that make the best cut flower ever, and you don't need an allotment or huge garden to grow them. I get mine in tuber form (bit like a bulb) from QD, a cheap and cheerful home garden shop. The tubers are around £2-£3 each, and it's so much cheaper to buy them like this and plant them in early Autumn rather than buying them already in bloom from garden centres. Proper bona fide gardeners lift them out of the ground and carefully store them over the winter - I am very lazy and never bothered to do this, so sometimes they come up the next year, and sometimes they get taken by the frost.
I grow mine in huge pots in my garden, as it's on the small side, though plants will grow much bigger with lots more blooms if they grow in the ground. Slugs love them, and the slimy little blighters can obliterate a small plant overnight. As my children are way past the eating everything in sight stage, I have to admit I do put some pellets around the base, and they know not to touch them. I do move the pots out the way if we have any young children visiting. Lots of water and a bit of Miracle Gro now and then, and you get the loveliest flowers to plonk in a vase, all the way through o the first frosts-I still had some flowers on one of mine last year at Halloween!
Tamsyn x
Loving the Dahlias and the pretty threads. I accept this is very random, but whenever I see Dahlias, I recall a speech by a character called Monk Adderley in the BBC 70s costume early 19th C drama series, Poldark. He brings a bunch to 'Demelza', who he is planning to seduce. Demelza has never seen the flower before and he explains that they were introduced to England as a root vegetable for the poor but the "saucy poor" didn't like the taste, so now they were selling the blooms. I never discovered if this was a true story, but they were certainly a food to the indigenous people of Mexico in the 16th C. Sorry - random, as I say, but thought I'd share! :-)
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