Chelsea — Have you ever looked closely at a Dahlia?
A sturdy stem stands straight beneath a full round bloom with concentric rings of curled petals. Colors range from buttery white to deep maroon, with variations of pink and orange. They make you feel that some things in life are almost perfect.
Last weekend, The Michigan Dahlia Society hosted its annual Dahlia Festival at the historic train depot in downtown Chelsea. Tucked away were two rooms full of flowers.
Hundreds of different varieties of dahlias and several floral arrangements lined one of the rooms on tables, some towering with enormous blooms and others small enough you might have missed them. Around their stems were cards bearing the flower names: names like “Sir Richard,” “Penhill watermelon,” and “Wizard of Oz.”
Past the old ticket counter in an adjoining room was a table with dahlias for purchase, grown and arranged by the society. Many smiling women and children left the event with a handful of impressive flowers.
Judges arrived before the public to observe and assess the flowers and decide on winners. The flowers were organized by “Experienced” and “Novice,” which I learned referred not to the number of years gardening but rather experience in showing flowers. To my untrained eye, all the flowers were marvelous, but handwritten notes from judges suggested room for improvement such as “needs leaves.”
“It’s the most persnickety plant,” one attendee laughed when I asked her whether she grew dahlias herself. She said her husband does and that she’s just starting out.
Similar to irises and tulips, dahlias usually are sold in root form, known as “tubers.” You can plant these in spring, and with proper care and pruning throughout their growth, you’ll have strong plants and exquisite flowers come late summer and fall. However, unlike other plants grown from bulbs, dahlia tubers must be dug up and stored over winter. As one attendee said, wherever you store them can’t be too wet or too dry, or they won’t make it.
A novice gardener, I grew my first dahlias this summer and thought guiltily of my poor flowers at home, finally staked up only because my mom, a seasoned grower, came to visit. When I mentioned my amateur foray into dahlias to one of the organizers of the event, she asked how many kinds I’d grown this year. When I answered “three,” she said next year it will be 100 and the next year 200.
Why would people love growing this persnickety plant that requires such close attention throughout the year? It may be the beauty that comes from work done well, or the chance to learn closely, or the drama of working with weather, as all gardeners and farmers understand.
For the members of the Michigan Dahlia society, it’s also the camaraderie and friendship they’ve found in growing dahlias together. The first group formed in 1925, making this its 100th year of meeting throughout the year for seminars, visits to one another’s gardens, and planning its public events, which also include a tuber sale in the spring. One member said that the older growers now act as judges for the flower show, handing down the wisdom they’ve cultivated over the years.
And it is this final reason for growing such a tricky flower that I find most compelling. With dahlias, the tubers can be stored over winters such that they can be planted and replanted for generations. One of my friends grows tubers given to her by her grandmother every year.
Connections like these to the past and to the future are hard to come by in a world so focused on speed and easy gratification, but they remind us that the work we do to cultivate beauty lasts much longer than a season.
M.C. Adams is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer.
