Hello friends,

Yes, I did buy more dahlias after I said my garden was completely full and I couldn't fit any more in, but I promise this time I had good reasons to do so...

First of all, I lost a number of dahlias this spring due to tubers rotting/eyes not forming, including:

• Arthur Hambley (DP)
• Cafe Au Lait (DP)
• Islander (DP)
• Muchacha (Dec)
• Salmon Runner (Dec)
• Tranquility (Col)
• Impression Fomoso (Col)
• The Phantom (Ane)

From my observations over the past couple of years, dinner plate dahlias seem more prone to rotting, and for this reason I am not planning on buying anymore dinner plate dahlias in the future, they're just not worth spending all that money on, just to end up rotting in spring.

Secondly, when my NZ Bulbs dahlia order arrived in early October, one of my collarette dahlias, Dark Tiger, was not in the package due to them being out of stock, and they replaced it with the waterlily dahlia, Twiggy. The dahlias in this order weren't in the best condition, and two of them (Tranquility and Impression Fomoso) are actually in the lost dahlias list. They didn't form any eyes at all, and then they rotted. I don't think I'll buy from NZ Bulbs ever again when it comes to dahlias.

Twiggy is a waterlily dahlia with warm pink suffused petals and a light yellow center.

And thirdly, I got rid of our small plastic pond in the back garden. When hubby installed it three years ago, he promised he would take care of it, and keep it clean, and that just didn't happen. So after I cleaned it out this spring (again), I talked with hubby, and he agreed with me that it was time for the pond to go. This freed up a large space in the right part of the back garden, and after some rearranging of dahlias in that area, it gave me more space for dahlias to go into the ground.

And fourthly, during the big North West storm in October my Avalanche camellia snapped off at ground level, and it left an open space in the garden which I could fill with another dahlia.

Luckily this all happened around the time that Bulbs Direct and Mount Mera Botanical restocked their dahlia varieties on their websites, so I bought some dahlias I missed out on earlier in the year, and with discounts too.

From Bulbs Direct I picked up Purple Haze, an anemone dahlia with deep plum-coloured blooms, darker in the centre, and rich dark green foliage.

From Mount Mera Botanical I picked up the following dahlia varieties:

Muchacha a small decorative dahlia with shades of rose pink, violet, and white, to replace the one I lost this spring.

Bacardi, a decorative dahlia with muddy-rose colouring and dark raspberry tips and centers. I lost this dahlia last spring due to it rotting, and I really wanted to replace it.

Platinum Blonde, an anemone dahlia with a fuzzy butter cream center and white petals.

Rockstar, an anemone dahlia with beautiful deep cranberry petals and fuzzy cushion centers.

Take Off, another anemone dahlia with soft, orchid-toned petals which encircle a lighter, fluffy center.

Princess Nadine, a collarette dahlia with double ruff of pink and plum petals and an apricot center.

And lastly, Skyfall, a collarette dahlia with luscious crimson petals and a gold heart.

As soon as these dahlias arrived by courier they all went straight into the ground, and they have already sprouted and begun to grow.

And finally just when I thought all my dahlia buying was done for the year, an opportunity came up that I just couldn't turn down. Emerden Flower Farm had Floret Petite dahlia seedlings for sale, and I couldn't miss out on buying some after I missed out on buying their Floret Petite Dahlia seeds last year. I bought 8 Floret Petite dahlia seedlings, and when they arrived by courier a couple of days later I planted them into a small section of our vegetable garden (bad of me I know, but I was desperate), and gave them a good watering. I'm excited to see what flower types and colours I'll get from them.

With summer fast approaching now, I can't wait to see all these new dahlia varieties flowering in my garden.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.

Tags: 2025, Anemone Dahlia, Anemone Dahlias, Bulbs Direct, Cafe Au Lait, Collarette Dahlia, Dahlia, Dahlias, Decorative Dahlias, Dinner Plate Dahlias, Floret, Floret Flower Farm, Floret Petite Dahlias, Flower Garden, Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Mount Mera Botanical, NZ Bulbs, Spring, Waterlily Dahlias

Hello friends,

The last couple of weeks have been very busy in the garden, with the weather now being warm enough to plant all the seedlings, plants, and dahlias in pots, out into the garden. This was super important, as the glasshouse was completely packed with plants, and my tomato, cucumber, and chilli and capsicum seedlings really needed to get planted in their final positions in the glasshouse.

The first plants to go out into the garden were the dahlias I had in pots, and also all the dahlia seedlings I'd grown from seed, which I put into two of the new side garden beds.

Next to plant out were all my natural dye plant seedlings into another new garden bed in the side garden, including tango cosmos, calendula, and Japanese indigo seedlings.

The vegetable garden beds also had to get weeded and dug over, so the corn, black turtle bean, lettuce, cabbage and bok choi seedlings could be planted into the garden.

After that, it was time for all the flower seedlings including cosmos, calendula, and pansies, to be dotted around the garden areas to fill out
empty spaces I leave for annual plants. This took about a week as I was very enthusiastic in sowing seeds this spring.

The last of my Floret zinnia seedlings (Unicorn, Precious Metals, and Dawn Creek Blush) went into two spare vegetable garden beds so they can self-pollinate with each other in blocks this growing season, to give me a stash of Floret seeds of my own for the coming years. There is no guarantee that Floret seeds will be imported into the country again any time soon, and I wanted to keep some seed stocks of these varieties for my garden.

And finally once the glasshouse was all but empty it was time to add compost to the glasshouse, dig over the soil, and plant out all my tomatoes (Pomodoro, Juanne Flamme, Hera, Island Bay, Lebanese, Grosse Lisse), capsicum (Marconi Red, Candy Cane), chilli (Serrano), and cucumber (Mini Me, Crunchy, Medici) varieties, and erect their climbing frames. I had some leftover plants which were given to family members.

Once the bigger plants were in place, I planted out my basil plants (Genovese, Gustosa, Lettuce Leaf) into the empty spaces. With that all done I scattered fertiliser, added Saturaid to help with water retention, replaced the yellow sticky traps to catch plant pests, and gave the glass house a good watering.

There are two more vegetable garden beds to be weeded, have compost added, and dug over for planting, but they are for special projects that will be dealt with by the time you read this blog post.

It's been a lot of work to get to get my garden to this point, and I've been neglecting weeding the garden to do this, so that will be my next big gardening job leading into summer in a couple of weeks.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.

Tags: 2025, Basil, Chillies, Floret, Floret Flower Farm, Flower Garden, Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Glasshouse, Homegrown Food, New Plants, Plant Dyeing, Seed, Seedlings, Seeds, Spring, Tomato, Tomatoes, Vege Garden, Vegetables, Zinnia, Zinnias

Hello friends,

As part of my dahlia growing experiments this year, one of my goals is to grow my own dahlia plants from seed. I have a stash of dahlia seed available, including the Bee's Choice dahlia variety from Floret in the USA (which I bought from Emerden last year), Beeline I and II dahlia seeds from the breeder Doctor Keith Hammett in New Zealand, dahlia seeds from Susie Ripley's garden in Dunedin, and also open pollinated seeds from my own garden.

At the end of August, once I was able to garden again after my second cataract surgery, I sowed my dahlia seeds into two covered seed trays, and sprinkled them with enough seed raising mix to cover them.

With them watered, and kept moist in the trays, the dahlia seeds stayed in our dining room in the warmth while they germinated. To my surprise, most of the dahlia seeds I planted germinated, at a rate of about 95%, which is way more dahlias than I expected to plant in my garden this year.

They grew nice and strong, and soon they were ready to transplant out into bigger pots with potting mix. They've been growing safe and sound in my glasshouse since then, growing bigger each week. My plan is to plant them in the garden after the last frost, but for now I have to figure out where I'm going to put 43 dahlia seedlings...

I can't wait to see what dahlia flowers appear from these seedlings over the summer. My plan is to be quite harsh with them, and I'll pull out any flowering plant that I'm not happy with, to give other dahlias room to grow. I'll give you updates as I go...

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.

Tags: 2025, Dahlia, Dahlia Seedlings, Dahlias, Floret, Floret Flower Farm, Flower Garden, Flowers, Garden, Garden Project, Gardening, Seed, Seed Saving, Seed Sowing, Seedlings, Seeds, Self-Seeded, Spring

Hello friends,

If you were to ask me about my top 5 favorite flowers of all time, the list would be something like this: Roses, Lavender, Dahlias, Daffodils, and Cosmos.

But over the last couple of years dahlias have crept up to the top that list, as each of the gardening projects around our home ended up giving me more and more space to grow dahlias. It also didn't help that I started following a bunch of dahlia growers on social media, and also especially, Floret Flower Farm in the USA, on both Instagram and YouTube. I became especially fond of anemone dahlias, collarette dahlias, and single dahlia varieties, of course in a large number of colours and sizes.

It got to a point that I had developed a wish list of some very cool, but rare dahlias I just had to have...and come dahlia bulb pre-sale time this winter I went a little nuts buying them.

The next problem was figuring out where to put them, so out came my trusty Instax photo printer, and I got to work printing out photos of all the dahlia varieties I had, and also the ones on their way to me, and then I got to work organizing them. First up was developing a dahlia database based on type and colour and size.

The colour coding in the database give me a quick idea of where my dahlias are in terms of where they are in the world. Sage green are dahlias already in place. Bright green are dahlias which have to be moved. Apricot means that the dahlia is in storage in the garage. Peach means that the dahlia has not arrived yet.

Next up was to break down our garden into sections, and then arrange the dahlia photos in each area of the garden to get an overall plan. I'm going to use the following abbreviations for the different dahlia types: Anemone (A), Collarette (C), Decorative (D), Dinner Plate (DP), and Single (S), Waterlily (W).

Front Garden Right: Peaches and Cream (D), Penhill Dark Monarch (DP), Totally Tangerine (A). I grouped these based on similar colouring.

Front Garden Middle: Iced Tea (D), Keith Hammett Dream Seeker (C), Joal Kaitlyn (D), and Sweet Nathalie (D). These all have similarish apricot colouring.

Front Driveway Road: Yelno Harmony (W), Cafe Au Lait (DP). These have light apricot colouring.

Front Driveway Middle: Lucky Number (D), Aporo Road Strawberry (D), Molly Raven (D), Cafe Au Lait Twist (DP). All these have dark pink shades, and should look amazing together.

Patio: Zahra (A), Floorinoor (A), Misses Amy (A). Three anemone dahlias I bought very recently, so they go into pots this year because I have no more space in the garden.

Back Driveway: Silver Years (D), Strawberry and Cream (D), Dutch Pearl (D), Muchacha (D). A gradient from light pink to dark pink.

Back Garden Back Fence: Rosemary Webb (W), Islander (DP), Bonesta (D), Bumble Rumble (C), Cafe Au Lait Royal (DP), Sweet Sanne (D), Cafe Au Lait Rose (DP), Arthur Hammerly (DP), Mambo (A), Misses Miley (D), Impression Famoso (C), Fenna Baij (A), Julie-Ann (S, a dahlia I hybridised last year), Keith Hammett Mystic Sparkler (S). A gradient of colour from left to right along the back fence. It's a bit more loose in terms of shading toward the right side, with dahlias I didn't know where to put elsewhere.

Back Garden Far Right Corner: Keith Hammett Butterscotch (C), The Phantom (A), Dark Tiger (C). Collarette and anemone dahlias that are small and fit under the small tree in that space.

Back Garden Right Fence Back: Keith Hammett Protegee (S), Keith Hammett Delicacy (C), Pink Magic (D), Keith Hammett Tranquility (C), Lady Liberty (D), and Polka (A). Shades of pink and white.

Back Garden Right Fence Front: Great Silence (D), Fancy Pants (C), Salmon River (D), and Fairway Pilot (DP). More peachy tones.

As you can see I now have 48 dahlias in my garden (which don't include the seedling dahlias I'm growing in pots right now). In this second spreadsheet I've organised the dahlias based on where they are in the garden, and which direction they are in. It's a good idea for when labels come off the dahlias, and I can't figure out which ones they are after they die back in winter...

With this large amount of dahlias in my garden, I now have no space for any more dahlias (or any other plants really), even though I do have some more dahlias on my wish list like Rhubarb and Cream, Appleblossom, Thomas Edison, Marshmallow Baby, Negroni Sunset, Klara Zak, Dutch Delight, Breakout, Purple Flame, and Labyrinth.

Either I need to dig up what little grass space we have left, or I would need to get rid of our long, side hedge, and then build a new fence between us and the neighbours, and then make another garden...

For now I'll just have to pit the dahlias up against each other Hunger Games style, and see which plants survive each year. 

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

PS - After this post was written I got word from NZ Bulbs that one of the dahlias that hadn't arrived yet, Dark Tiger, was unavailable, so I had to choose another dahlia to replace it with. I chose the waterlily dahlia "Twiggy", but then had to rearrange a couple of dahlias in that area of the garden to fit this change, as Twiggy grows much bigger in size than the space I had chosen Dark Tiger for...

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.

Tags: 2025, Anemone Dahlia, Collarette Dahlia, Dahlia, Dahlias, Decorative Dahlias, Dinner Plate Dahlias, Flower Garden, Garden, Garden Database, Garden Design, Garden Planning, Garden Project, Gardening, Single Dahlia, Spring, Waterlily Dahlias