Dahlia Diaries: Life Lessons From the Flower Garden

By Steve K. Lloyd

Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved

I came to gardening much later than I wished.

Most of my life was spent in a northern climate that (I now realize) would have presented enormous challenges to growing edible and ornamental plants. The demands of starting and growing a business occupied the bulk of my time. 

During summer months, the allure of the Alaskan wilderness and its many adventures pulled me far afield. 

Only when I moved to the northwest corner of Washington State, where, as youthful retirees, my wife and I landed on ten acres with a neglected vegetable garden and 20 spindly fruit trees did I see the possibilities.

As a book-lover, I immersed myself in books about the wonders of this temperate growing zone. I devoured Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon and set out to transform the weedy plot that came with the house. 

I learned about soil improvement, seed germination, days to harvest, frost hardiness, and the tricky effects of day length on vegetables. Soon, we were enjoying garden-fresh salads, followed by fresh blueberries and raspberries as I sorted out the fruit bushes that flourished under my regenerative efforts.

As the garden and landscaping responded under my care, I felt an internal transformation. No longer a servant of the customers, employees, and vendors who had previously absorbed so much life energy, I allowed myself to adjust instead to the rhythms of the seasons, the feel of the soil, and the call of birdsong from the fruit trees. 

I’d become a gardener.

Apart from planting a few decorative perennials in the landscape beds that were indifferently designed by a previous owner, my first foray into flower gardening started with roses. Here in the Pacific Northwest, deer are frequent visitors. But the old vegetable garden was already fenced, so I expanded that barrier to encircle a sunny spot. In my mind's eye, I envisioned it full of sweet scented and colorful rose bushes.

Inspired by my growing collection of gardening books and sound advice from an excellent local plant nursery, I planted fifty rose bushes. 

A more cautious approach might have been to start with a couple, learn how to care for them, and see how they fared in my garden. But I wanted dramatic results fast and figured that caring for 50 roses would be only slightly more work than caring for five, them being so close together.

As it turned out, that was only sort of true. The roses grew and bloomed (some magnificently), while a few sickened and wasted despite my best efforts and advice from many reference books. 

But I experienced the joy of creating something beautiful with plants for the first time and cultivating a garden of gorgeous color for the simple joy of doing it. I was hooked.

I stumbled upon dahlias by accident. Walking through the garden aisle at the local home center, an incredible variety of annuals and perennials called “Plant me! Plant me!” I wondered if I could add a few to the rose garden.

The roses had been planted in early March, and the following spring, I loaded up dozens of potted perennials and bags of spring-blooming bulbs, corms, and tubers—all words I barely knew at that point.

Among my purchases were a couple of mixed packs of dahlia tubers. I dutifully followed the package instructions and planted them here and there along the rose garden fence, where they would have the support my books assured me would be necessary as they grew. 

That first summer shaped my gardening path forever.

My first dahlias were Sun Lady, a yellow informal decorative, and Sandra, a pink ball dahlia. There was also Rosella, and there might have been Graceland—although I think the label was wrong, and it was also Rosella. 

They all bloomed like crazy and added bold swaths of dark pink and bright yellow to the golds, reds, and peach colors of the neighboring roses. They drew compliments from visitors and bloomed well into the cool months of late autumn.

At the time, I knew nothing about the life cycle of dahlias. In fact, if you’d quizzed me, I would not have been willing to guess whether they were annuals or perennials. That mystery was solved the following spring when up sprouted a fresh crop of Sandras, Sun Ladies, and Rosellas without me doing anything! 

It turns out that—like me—dahlias could reinvent themselves and return to the garden despite the inattention of their novice caretaker.

Over the next few seasons, my gardening knowledge grew as the number, and variety of plants increased. 

The calendar became a marker of what to do in the garden rather than the rigid schedule it dictated when I ran a booming retail store. I learned that the feel of the soil could tell me as much about my garden's irrigation needs as any weather app. 

Watching the bees congregate on some dahlias and ignore others, piqued my curiosity about the flower’s form, open pollination, and seed propagation. I took a two-hour dahlia class at my local nursery to pick up the basics of tuber division. Then I headed straight home and excavated the gigantic tuber clumps formed by my first Costco dahlias, now undisturbed for three years. 

The roses became crowded with dahlias. I needed a plan.

Kristine Albrecht and Joe Lamp’l inspired my passion for dahlias.

In February 2022, noted dahlia expert and hybridizer Kristine Albrecht was a guest on The Joe Gardener Show. For the first time, I heard an experienced dahlia grower discussing dahlia growing, propagation, tuber, seed propagation—things I had picked up in bits and pieces by reading. Hearing Kristine's conversation and hearing Joe’s enthusiasm about dahlias piqued my interest in these plants, which I knew little about.

Even more dahlia tubers joined my garden that spring and I began propagating dahlias from cuttings. 

When I discovered dahlia groups on Facebook, I enthusiastically broke my longstanding aversion to social media and discovered the friendship and knowledge of dahlia growers around the world. I made local connections with other dahlia growers and started trading and selling my tubers and cuttings.

The following spring, I tilled a large plot of flat ground on my property and expanded my dahlia growing to row planting for the first time. The original rose garden still bursts with dahlias crowded into every spare corner. But having room to raise hundreds of dahlias in rows opened up new possibilities, and they grew magnificently.

I found specific cultivars that excited me more than others, so I experimented with mass plantings of those varieties in my landscape beds. A few of my open-pollinated hybrid seedlings showed real promise, so I began propagating those plants with the goal of eventually releasing them to the market.

Vegetables still flourish in the garden bed that I rescued from the weeds and brambles when I first moved here, and the early rose bushes have grown tall. During the summer months, my property literally buzzes with pollinators and songbirds. 

The deer still come to visit, but apart from nibbling the odd rosebud foolish enough to grow through the fence, they leave the dahlias alone.