Dahlia Fan Club’s first blooms!

(A quick recap for the uninitiated.) The Dahlia Fan Club started as an online Pinterest board where my friend Emma and I post pictures of lush Dahlias….then we decided to take it offline into our backyards, and planted dahlias for this summer…

Well, I planted mine far too early – following the instructions on the packet and not realising that the baby plants were very frost tender. Fraser graciously shielded the fledgling plants with a frost cloth every cold night, so the blooms you are about to see are largely due to his efforts. Anyway, because we’ve had a warm, wet spring – I have flowers already! (They are supposed to bloom in ‘late summer’.)

Also, happily the dahlia Magnus chose which looked brown on the photograph of the packet, is actually a wonderful dark red. Yay! No poo-flowers!

I planted five, and two are still tiny stunted things, no sign of bloom….but three, funnily enough BOTH of the ones my children chose and one of the ones I chose, have really gone for it! The two that are still small are both ‘pom-pom’ varieties, so maybe they are slower growing than the ‘starburst’ flower shape?

The one Willoughby chose looks like this when it first unfurls:

…and then like this after about a week:

First Dahlia Fan Club SUCCESS. I can’t wait to see what my other two look like and to see Emma’s when they come up. I positioned them around the outside of the chicken run, so that I can see them when I sit on the porch, which I do for a lot of the summer…and indeed, they are so bright the eye travels directly there!