It’s a stake out
LIVING in the high Cotswolds lets you experience the full force of every season and, sometimes, we get all four in one day in my garden. When winter bites, my thoughts turn to my glorious dahlias. I’ll soon be ordering more varieties from Rose Cottage Plants, despite the fact that there are already 140 tucked up under the greenhouse bench, packed together under a layer of protective compost. The plants are guarded by a frostbreaking heater, but new shoots won’t appear until April here and then they’ll be divided and potted on. They’re not fed, or pinched out, and they spend most of May outside to toughen them up.
The dahlias are planted in haste in early June and crammed into 4ft-wide cutting beds, arranged by foliage because labels often go missing. Dark-leaved dahlias, which seem to need more warmth, are put at the sunnier ends. Their foliage is more slug prone and I reason that sunnier, drier positions are less attractive to munching molluscs. The memory of my guardsman-red ‘Monte Negro’ can dispel winter gloom in a blink. Greener-leafed deep-reds include ‘Karma Choc’, ‘Sam Hopkins’, ‘Soulman’ and, this year, I’m adding ‘Brigitta Alida’, a shaggy red Afghan hound of a dahlia. Their dark flowers won’t scorch in savage sunshine and these tuberous plants survive July and August droughts.
If the foliage is pale green (and frankly ugly), it’s almost certainly a large decorative with shaggy flowers on ultra-strong, very long stems. I’ve picked hundreds of blooms from peach-tinted whirligig ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘Penhill Watermelon’ in the past year. Two large dahlias get planted across the 4ft width. Shyer growers may get planted more densely, due to space issues. The weakest stems of all belong to cactus and semi-cactus varieties, but even these don’t get staked with the recommended three bamboo canes and string. It’s far too timeconsuming and it looks hideous.
I support my dahlias with interplanted annuals and firstyear perennials raised from seed. This no-stake approach began 10 years ago after I spotted a dazzling combination involving the red-flowered ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ amid a veil of purple provided by Verbena bonariensis. This verbena is easy to raise from seed. It will flower in its first year and produce self-sown seedlings. I plan to add Verbena officinalis var. grandiflora ‘Bampton’, found in the Devon town of the same name, next year. I can’t see why this bushy plant has grandiflora in its Latin name, for the pink flowers are tiny. However, ‘Bampton’ flowers late and self-seeds moderately (for me) and the wiry bushiness persists through winter. I can visualise ‘Bampton’ poking through ‘Totally Tangerine’, a shorter dahlia with a circlet of petals surrounding a button anemone middle that stays pincushion neat. (Most anemone centres morph into chaos.)
I’ve been using taller cosmos among my dahlias for many years because they flower late and get woodier stems as temperatures cool. When I’m picking dahlias, a twice-weekly occurrence that usually involves pushing a wheelbarrow through the village to distribute bunches, I nip off the spent cosmos flowers at the same time. The single cosmos flowers, as are all annuals, are pollinator friendly and most of my petalpacked dahlias aren’t. ‘Sonata Carmine’ and ‘Fizzy Rose Picotee’ are two stalwarts and they help diffuse a greenish white semicactus dahlia named ‘My Love’.
This year, I went overboard at filling the gaps because I had a surfeit of hardy annuals due to lockdown overenthusiasm. The star of the show was Monarda hybrida ‘Lambada’. The 4ft-high slender stems had whorls of longlasting mauve-purple bracts, punctuated by a section of woody stem ringed in aromatic foliage. Some of my ‘Lambada’ went on flowering until November, but others produced stiff-stemmed, mink-brown seedheads that resembled skewered astrantias.
Growing hardy annuals and first-year flowering perennials from seed needn’t be onerous or stressful. Both are keen to germinate when daytime temperatures reach between 10˚C and 15˚C, usually late March here. You can avoid back-breaking pricking out by using 4in by 6in modular trays. Use seed-sowing compost and water the filled trays well with tap water that’s been allowed to stand, before putting the merest pinch into each module. Cover lightly and lay off the watering. Germination should take 10 days or so and the roots should fill each module by late May. I’m planning to use the feathery, tasteful pink pokers of Celosia argentea var. spicata and a statice with slender pinkish-purple fingers, Limonium suworowii. There won’t be a cane in sight.
The Living Jigsaw: the secret life in your garden by Val Bourne is out now
Next week Potato days
I support my dahlias with interplanted annuals and perennials