I'm as much a fashion victim as the next gardener. Somehow, as the years have gone by, dahlias started looking better and better, writes Jane Powers
AFTER A DECADE of living a dahlia-free life, I decided that 2008 was going to be the year of the dahlia in my garden. I do love a dahlia - but so also do the slugs and snails that live here. In the past, the tubers that I had carefully planted in late spring failed to show above ground. Soil-dwelling slugs tunnelled their innards out before they had time to sprout, or if a tentative shoot managed to poke its green nose out, it was summarily mown down. Dahlia plants, bought as full-grown adults, had likewise succumbed to the mashing molluscs.
Our granite walls offer shelter to colonies of gastropods, especially snails, so there isn't much we can do to control them effectively, short of engaging in a never-ending chemical war (and we value the rest of our wildlife too much for that). For the most part, I forgo the plants that are dinners for slugs and snails, and am content to admire them in other people's patches.
But this year I got fed up with envying dahlias in various Irish gardens: I craved my own. The dahlia, I feel, is one of the most endearingly impudent of flowers, whether it is a small and neat thing, such as the tangerine-coloured pom-pom 'Minley Carol', or a big firework of a bloom, such as the spiny, pink 'Rose Preference'. Its immoderate choice of colours and its finicky perfection - with every petal so precise that it could be moulded of plastic - make it appealingly presumptuous, and guaranteed to make you smile.
But hang on there while I rein myself in for a minute. I see that I am extolling the benefits of flowers that look as if they are made of plastic - and garish, rigid plastic at that. And this from a person who is a serious devotee of all things naturalistic and artless. How can this be? Well, I'm afraid that - despite all my fine and individualistic talk - it's because I'm as much of a fashion victim as the next gardener. Somehow, as the years have gone by, dahlias have started looking better and better. It started (not just for me, but for most other gardeners also) with the blood-red-flowered 'Bishop of Llandaff'. Years ago, Edna White, who wrote this column in the 1980s, and who has a keen and refreshingly sceptical take on the vagaries of garden fashion, explained to me that the "Bishop" was one of the few dahlias allowed in posh gardens (and I dutifully got a few of my own, which were sacrificed in short order to the slugs). The red flowers, usually a problem among the then-pastel-loving brigade, were made acceptable by the very dark foliage.
At that time, the "Bishop" was having one of its periodic stints at the forefront of garden fashion, having swung in and out of style since its introduction in Cardiff in 1928 by Fred Treseder. In 1936, the Spectatordeclared that it was the "most popular flower of the moment", and eight years later, eminent Irish horticulturist G O Sherrard, writing in this newspaper, suggested that an island bed planted solely with the bright-red dahlia would be a good-looking addition to the lawn. Perhaps this treatment, in vogue at the time, was just too much of a good thing. Soon after, gardeners went off the Welsh ecclesiastic's namesake for more than 40 years.
It entered the limelight again 15 or 20 years ago. The late Christopher Lloyd was a champion of the "Bishop", and other warm-coloured dahlias, which he teamed with tropical-looking specimens in the exotic part of his garden at Great Dixter. The large-leaved plants that he used in this enclave are perfect dahlia partners: canna, Japanese banana ( Musa basjoo), castor oil plant ( Ricinus communis), Paulownia tomentosa, and the rice paper plant ( Tetrapanax papyrifer), to mention a few. In fact, almost any plant with bold and exaggerated leaves makes a congenial backdrop for fiery-toned dahlias, and helps to create a jungly looking picture.
Hot-hued dahlias - such as 'David Howard' (smallish, apricot flowers and dark foliage) - also combine well with the tall and airy-fairy, pale-purple-headed Verbena bonariensis. They make cheerful companions for Artemisiaand other grey-foliaged plants; and they are a bright counterpoint to the beige or golden heads of various grasses.
In the Dillon garden in Ranelagh, the lipstick-red 'Murdoch' is effectively allied with the pinky-buff plumes of Calamagrostis emodensis, a beautiful grass from China, India and Pakistan, which, unfortunately, has no common name.
In the past several years, dahlias have been fully rehabilitated. After the "Bishop" got its foot in the door, a crowd of other red, yellow, orange, wine and pink varieties came swarming in, enlivening borders with their vivacious and slightly crazy flowerheads. Most of them have been around for 40 or more years, and are solid, dependable varieties, righteously enjoying their new-found popularity.
But gardeners are terribly fickle. If you listen carefully when a plant achieves popular acclaim, you can often hear its death-knell sounding mournfully, behind the cheers and claps of approval. I heard the bell toll just the other day for the gorgeous (or so I thought then) 'David Howard'. In one of Ireland's top gardens, its owner noted: "I don't like it any more, I'm not keen on the foliage."
Yes, that was just one gardener, but that's all it takes: aversion is infectious. And come to think of it, while I do appreciate the jolly and prolific orange flowers of 'David Howard', its leaves might be just a little overdone, as it were.
But, while some dahlias may fade in popularity, the genus is still to be found in all the "best" gardens. Most of the old favourites are still there (for the moment, anyway), but popping up among them now are much simpler kinds of species, with single, daisy-like flowers. These include the rosy-mauve D. sherfii, the smallflowered, mauve D. merckii, the scarlet D. coccinea(one of the ancestors of all modern hybrid dahlias) and interesting crosses of these. They're not easy to buy (their rarity, of course, makes them all the more desirable), but some can be grown from seed, and specialists such as the Welsh Crüg Farm (www.crug-farm.co.uk) offer a few by mail order.
But back to my own garden, and the longed-for year of the dahlia. We outwitted the slugs and snails by growing our tubers in big pots, which we started in the greenhouse in early spring. We moved them outside, and were delighted when the molluscs weren't interested in scaling the pots and eating the mature leaves of the plants. But the flowers, alas, were disappointing, with weak stems and no profusion. We didn't overfeed, so I suspect their eventual location was not sunny enough.
But never mind, with the kind of authoritarian dictatorship that is perfectly fine in one's own garden, I'm declaring next year the Year of the Dahlia. This year was just a dress rehearsal. Fashion being what it is, though, we may need to get a whole different line-up of stars for 2009.