Dahlia Festival 2008 – Day Four

Dahlia Festival 2008 – Day Four
Mixed Dahlias


These Dahlias are mixed just like the ones that I bought this spring. Next year I am getting the named cultivars. The mix was too heavy on Informal Decoratives and not enough unusual ones. The only ones I bought by name were the dark leaved ones and the few that went into containers. The first picture is a homegrown Dahlia. It is from the small cutting garden (two strips, 2.5 feet wide by 10 feet long) in Greenwich that we planted this spring. Dahlias formed the backbone of the garden with Zinnias and Cosmos growing up in between. Even though the space was small I used some Ageratum ‘Artist Blue’ along the edges. ‘Artist Blue’ is great. It is a vegetative type, which is much more uniform then the strains grown from seed.

The Dahlias did really well in their spot and this one has gotten about 7 feet tall. It looks familiar and if there were any spring plant catalogs lying around here I would try and look it up.


This second Dahlia is in the larger Dahlia garden that I tend to. It has been a good producer and the color is really very nice. The plant got about 4.5 feet tall.


These next two flowers were photographed at White Flower Farm. The first one is named ‘Caballero’ and there were only a few references on the net about it. The tag at White Flower said ‘trial’ so they maybe selling it next year. It was a very nice Dahlia, the red and gold goes to together well. The second is ‘Raisha’ and the info on this one was even scarcer. I think both will become more popular.



I am not sure where this picture was taken let alone what Dahlia it is.


These are the 19 classes of Dahlia Flowers:

Formal Decorative
Informal Decorative
Straight Cactus
Semi Cactus
Incurved Cactus
Laciniated
Ball
Mini Ball
Pom
Waterlily
Stellar
Novelty Fully Double
Novelty Open Center
Anemone Single
Collerette
Orchid
Mignon Single