Dahlia 'Ludwig Helfert'

Dahlia 'Ludwig Helfert'

I took a drive up Route 7 yesterday and ended up in Litchfield. I was looking for some foliage but nothing really caught my eye. When I was driving by White Flower Farm I decided to stop in and take a look at the gardens and the plants they had for sale. I don’t usually buy much from them but occasionally I like to get some of the more trendy items they grow. I have used their bulbs before with good success. They cost more but produce more flowers. One year I bought about a 1,500 Daffodils for the estate from them (there are about 15,000 total in the garden). Too bad I didn’t keep the varieties straight because there is one that blooms in late June. Anyway the gardens were very autumnal but still had a good variety of flowers and foliage left for viewing. It did end up getting a little windy but I was able to snap a few pictures in between gusts.


There was a whole collection of Dahlias in the garden (hint: you maybe seeing more of them in a couple of days). This one is the Semi-cactus form ‘Ludwig Helfert’. The Semi-Cactus form is defined as:

“Ray florets are broad at the base, straight or incurved, and reflex toward the stem in a regular and uniform arrangement. Ray florets will be revolute for approximately half their length and fully revolute (touching or overlapping) for at least one-fourth their length. The ideal depth is three-quarters the diameter of the bloom and should not be greater than its diameter.”
Courtesy of dahlia.org (you can find the other forms of Dahlias on that page).


People take their Dahlias very seriously and it takes a lot to keep the tens of thousands of cultivars straight. I have to go with Dinnerplate and Cactus as being my two favorite types. There have been several other posts of Dahlias on this site, some of which I grew myself. The Dahlias didn’t do great this year and I am thinking about not growing a big bed of them next year. While I had been happy with the mixed Dahlia packages I had been ordering I was disappointed this year. Pretty crummy varieties except one or two of them. So if I do plant some next year it will only be named varieties that I select.