In a vase on Monday: Brian’s Dream Dahlias

Yes, he did indeed ply us with dahlias too, and my goodness haven’t we enjoyed appreciating these at close quarters! The quality and size of the blooms are just wonderful and the length and straightness of the stems show just what a semi-professional dahlia grower can do with their advanced knowledge and years of experience. I am in complete awe of their perfection!

Brian, the owner of the garden (see yesterday’s post), had worked in horticulture until he retired, including for a specialist dahlia/chrysanthemum company, and clearly loved his dahlias which were the mainstay of his garden. He was delighted to share this enthusiasm with an interested party and readily shared the names of all these dahlias and others I enquired about but without any means of recording them at the time I am afraid I haven’t got a proper record. My favourite was the glowing scarlet pompom or is it a ball? (I believe there is a technical difference in dahlia nomenclature!), which we were told is virtually the same as ‘Blyton Lady in Red’ which Brian also had but which he didn’t pick for us; both were just as stunning:

I recognised ‘David Howard’, a large decorative orange dahlia, but was gobsmacked by this almost luminous yellow one,  such a distinctive shade that you could imagine would really glow in the dark; I think I am correct in remembering this as ‘Glorie van Heemstede’:

The ‘Brian’s Dream’ of the title is a white dahlia with a hint of lilac and I am sure Brian said that both dahlias at the top of the picture below were that variety; certainly the lighter one is. SAdly, I didn’t think to ask him if it was one he bred himself… The beautiful violet one is possibly ‘Willo’s Violet’, another beauty. Hmmm, I am finding myself particularly enamoured by these pompom/ball dahlias…

One of the red dahlias had suffered a broken stem before we got back so was cut short and popped into a pretty little stoneware vase, whilst Mum’s small stock of vases was searched to find a vase and tall and sturdy enough to cope with the other top-heavy blooms. A tall ‘moss’ Caithness Glass vase was retrieved from the loft and to keep the contents distinctly different one of the two luminous blooms was given its own vase, a smaller one from the same maker. I didn’t want to experiment too much with the length of stems in the main vase I case I cut too much off too soon, but after photographs were taken I did cut another inch or two from the violet one which seems to balance the vase a little better.

I know there are many of you out there who will be getting pleasure from picking material  from their gardens and putting them in their own vases today. I have bent my own rules a little as these dahlias were not from my own garden but of course they are still in the spirit of the meme and not only are they bringing pleasure to my Mum, the Golfer and myself, but cutting them for us clearly gave Brian pleasure as well. Do share your own pickings with the rest of us too by writing about them on your blogs and leaving links to and from this post, as always.

I will probably not be able to reply to all your comments this time round and may not get to see all your Monday vases either, so apologies in advance if this proves to be the case – you know how diligent I normally am!

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