Dahlia garden review: exciting newcomers

Hooray for Spring!

It has been sunny and bright here in Holland, the cherry trees and magnolias are in full bloom and daffodils are starting to flower in the streets. It’s almost time to start planting my dahlias!

Last week I shared my trusted favourites, dahlia varieties I have been growing for a few years now. Beautiful dahlias I will be growing again this year.

This week I would like to present a few new favourites. These dahlias are not (all) new introductions, and maybe you already know everything about them, but they were new to my garden. I like to share my enthusiasm and hope you find this post helpful!

Jowey Winnie

Jowey Winnie was a true discovery last year. This dahlia has the prettiest form and colour. I love the perfect geometry of ball dahlias! One step deeper in colour than Linda’s Baby, Jowey Winnie has a warm peach undertone. The colour is a very sophisticated, dusty pink.

I never expected the flowers to be so big! The blooms are large and very firm. Bigger than any of the other ball dahlias I grow.  The long, strong stems make them ideal for cutting. A must-have for flower arrangers.

They are wonderful to create with. You may already have seen it in an arrangement with Labyrinth and Preference.

It has quickly become one of my favourites.

Mambo

I love anemone flowered dahlias and each year I try to add one or two to my collection.

Mambo was a pleasant surprise. The fabulous, double blooms are bigger than most anemone shaped dahlias. Flowers are a bit flat, but they have lots of petals, a fluffy centre, and long stems. Each reddish-golden centre is surrounded by a ring of lilac-pink petals. An unusual dahlia!

Rock Star

Rock Star is another anemone flowered dahlia. If you love dark, saturated colours, then Rock Star is the dahlia for you. The small blooms are a beautiful, deep cranberry-purple with a fuzzy centre. The backward growing petals are tipped with pink. Small, but special!

Café au Lait Rosé

As I wrote in last weeks blog post, everyone loves the classic Café au Lait dahlia and now there is an exciting new sister, Café au Lait Rosé! This cultivar has been bred from the familiar, and very popular, Café au Lait. It is similar in both size and form to the original, but the flowers are a deep pink colour. These showy blooms are real head-turners!

Café au Lait blooms in a range of shades; ivory, pale pink, cream and more. Café au Lait Rosé also varies, but less so than the other new sister, Café au Lait Royal. I also grew that one but wasn’t really pleased with it. Too much colour variation, strange blooms.

I had Café au Lait Rosé growing in my dahlia garden and it was a very prolific bloomer. I had so many flowers, week after week! And that colour! It’s rosé alright. A pinker shade of pink, candy cane pink. A bit too pink for my taste, but I’ll keep it anyway 😉

What do you think, do you expect Rosé to be equally popular as the lovely Café au Lait?

Wine Eyed Jill

But it’s not only the showy dahlias that deserve some attention. Wine Eyed Jill is a dahlia with much more refined and modest flowers than the sensational dinnerplate dahlias. A ball dahlia with rather small flowers in pale pink, with a dark, wine red heart. This was an early bloomer and very useful in mixed bouquets. Extremely tall stems!

Groovy

Groovy has small blooms that are a mix of rusty pink-red with orange undertones. An unusual colour, but they looked wonderful in arrangements with pretty much any other variety. Good cut flowers that grow on bushy plants with beautiful dark foliage.

That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this post and found some inspiration for your own dahlia garden. Good luck on planting your tubers!

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