I’m so tired of this dahlia! Then again …

Resolutions for the garden? That’s risky. Something about best laid plans, and I’m not a very good planner. No matter what I do, my garden does as it chooses. I start out thinking I have some kind of control over how it turns out, only to see it evolve through the season in surprising ways.

Year to year consistency is easy enough to achieve by planting only a limited number of basic, reliable performers. I’m just not that kind of gardener; by planting more than is sensible, I have something new to look forward to, daily or at least weekly. From spring until fall I’m always being surprised, amused, shocked, even disappointed.

Disappointment comes when something I’ve nurtured from seedhood to a viable seedling succumbs to insects or disease, rogue weather, or success. Yes, success, and of my own making. For instance, I went on a dahlia binge last year. I started with a couple of stored tubers, smaller varieties suited to bed or planter, and they were beauties. I bought two more, a friend gave me one, and then I received another pair as samples.

I decided to make a grouping and designated a corner solely for them. They loved it, especially as it turned out to be a perfect year for dahlias, so much so that by midsummer I was beginning to tire of them. They wouldn’t stop flowering. Every one of them produced bloom after bloom, on and on until frost finished them off. What a relief that was.

Each one I planted was a star in its own right, and could have held its own in any mixed flower bed, but one annoyed me more than any of the others. It had huge, bright, butter-coloured flowers that floated over the others like party balloons.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise with a name like Kelvin Floodlight. It was a dinnerplate dahlia and they have flowers up to 20 or more centimetres across.

Dinnerplate is not an official classification, but it’s the term used to describe it by most growers.

Alternative names could easily be hubcap dahlia, or eight-slice pizza. Don’t get me wrong, this is an amazing plant, except you can have too much of a good thing. It grew as tall as me, dwarfing the other varieties, and with its lush, deep green foliage it began crowding them out. And the flowers kept on coming. My pleasure at seeing something new appear daily or weekly was tempered at the sight each morning of yet more big yellow flower heads looking me in the eye.

It will brighten up any garden, said the description. Well, it would with a name like Kelvin. Kelvin is a temperature scale like Celsius or Fahrenheit used to rank the colour temperature of a light source. For instance, daylight at midday is rated at 5500K.

You may be thinking I’m wandering off topic here, but you might find it useful when sourcing lights for indoor growing as most will have a Kelvin rating. A lower number indicates a reddish light, while a higher one enters the blue range, but more on that when it’s time to start seedlings — or dahlia tubers.

Under lights is where I started my dahlia tubers last year. I enjoyed them all, even Kelvin Floodlight — at least at first, but I think I’ll give it a miss this year. However, don’t let my unbelievable success with it put you off. It’s a terrific plant to light up your backyard and it is easy to grow. Back in 2005, the American Dahlia Society piled on more awards for Kelvin than any other giant Dahlia.

Maybe I’ll grow it one more time.

To chat with local gardeners, share tips, pics, or discuss resolutions, see Grand Gardeners on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ groups/Grandgardeners/.