Thursday…with The National Dahlia Collection

It’s been a few years since I first discovered the National Dahlia Collection and wrote about it here and then shared more pictures another year here but basically each time I visit 3 things always happen; I can’t stop taking photos, I can’t stop collecting compost heap dahlias, and I can’t stop smiling.It’s a very unassuming ‘National’ place; a field down a twisty lane near Penzance, a stone’s throw from St Michael’s Mount, mostly unattended and heaving with different varieties of dahlia.

I’m often asked what is my favourite flower and usually I’m reticent to give an answer as I like to remain flexible with the seasons and my own personal gardening triumphs or disasters, but between August and October I think I have to come clean and say that it’s got to be the dahlia. It’s a flower I’m not confident growing in my own garden and this year has marked the first successful, un-snail bitten flower which I’ve ever managed to grow in the ground…and which I bought last year from The National Dahlia Collection!

I’ve now got 3 others which I’ll plant this year and wait patiently for next, as yesterday I visited again and for a second time took my friend Emma ( @sewrecycled )…there’s nothing like sharing the joy of a field of brightly coloured flowers…on the morning we left Cornwall, giving our compost head dahlias the best chance of survival.

So there follows images of the field, the greenhouse nursery, and the resulting flower arrangements back in Brighton after the 7 hour drive home! I’d dampened the inside of a bin liner and put all the dahlias in before driving home, and they were almost the first thing I got sorted when we arrived in Brighton ( giving Cheeks lots of hugs and attention was the first thing!! ) It was getting dark and I was knackered by the time I’d tidied them up and sorted them into 11 vases, so waited until today to fully appreciate them…

You can find out more about The National Dahlia Collection here and you can flip through the Steller Story version here which has a few extra videos.