Dad hated dahlias. They were ‘common’. And as for chrysanthemums... Dad was from Derbyshire. We were in Devon. He thought of them as a northern flower, mostly grown by men on allotments, for show, with competitive shades and shapes.
I was always more comfortable with the thought of being common than Dad, who was proudly, profoundly middle class. We had a huge garden, there was an orchard, long lawns, there were red hot pokers, even pampas grass, but he drew the line at dahlias.
Like marigolds, they were first brought back by the conquistadors, hybridised by a Swede, Anders Dahl, in the 18th century. Hugely fashionable in the 19th century they had largely disappeared from, say, southern English gardens by the time I was a boy – seen as too working class until, like children’s names such as Ben and Ned, dogs like lurchers, they returned around the millennium.
I grow them in pots on the roof terrace, attracted by their colours, though I go for reds and yellows rather than pompom pinks. I have long held a torch for ‘Bishop of Auckland’ – ecclesiastical, crimson-robed.
They are a signal of autumn. I don’t take the tubers up: London winters are pretty forgiving. My dahlias mostly return year on year, and I top one or two up in the July and August drop when summer flowers start to fail.
I pinch out the tip of the central stem to encourage them to bush. I see them grow on my morning rounds (the terrace is the size of a bedroom). I am impatient for them to bud though I know it will tell me summer’s ending.
The farmer’s market is full of them – garish, hopeful – though they don’t do well for me as cut flowers. They tend to fade too fast. But from now until (I hope) into October they’ll brighten our darkening days.
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