Darling dahlias charm the senses

If you can get lost in a flower, the dahlia is a good place to start. Dahlias reflect the voluptuous ripeness of autumn. Their colors can be saturated or subtle, jewel tones or pastels, but it is the intricate symmetry of their petals that hypnotizes.

Linda Ernst fell under this spell. I first encountered her flowers at the classification table at the Dixie Classic Fair in Winston-Salem in October. They were sitting across the way, vases with single stems ending in incredible colored masses of petals as big as my head, swirling and flaming in brilliant oranges and reds, and perfectly structured balls of white. They were stunning.

It was the fair that sparked Ernst’s interest in dahlias to begin with. A member of Bermuda Run Garden Club, she once was asked to clerk for the judges in the dahlia entries. Before long she was seduced by their beautiful blooms and wanted to try her own hand at growing them. She started out with a few tubers bought at a big-box store and, after great success, she graduated to ordering from Swan Island Dahlias in Oregon, a leading dahlia specialty nursery.

Ernst has worked dahlias into several island-style beds around her property. These are bordered by stacked stones and contain shrubs, roses and evergreens along with a fringe of flowering perennials, but the dahlias take center stage this time of year.

Dahlias are big, unruly creatures, so making them fit into an existing landscape plan is no small feat. Show dahlias are often relegated to agricultural fields and propped up in tomato cages. Ernst too, uses tomato cages—tall triangular ones that for the most part fade into the scenery unnoticed. Without them, the sapling-size trunks of these plants would soon split and topple.

Ernst said she soon learned that with strict staking she could pull the recommended 4-foot spacing on the plants a foot or so closer. The plants easily stand 5 feet tall. The first variety in the bed, Bodacious, was an example of how intricate and seductive the colors and patterns of dahlia flowers could be. It was easily 8 inches across. The petals were a flame orange on their surface and a brilliant yellow on the undersides. At the curl of each orange petal the yellow beneath was revealed, making an incendiary combination reminiscent of licking flames. In the center of the blossoms the two colors joined in a pinwheel effect.

Standing close by was its polar opposite, the snowy Hardesty White. This huge flower was the epitome of pure, clean white, the size of a bowling ball. In contrast, Midnight Dancer, a formal decorative form with the deepest velvet purple-red flowers, was as inky dark as the former was brilliant white. Platinum Blonde, an anemone type flower, surrounded a puff of quilled, cream-yellow petals with a daisy ray of white petals.

Other beds were as generously outfitted in dahlias as this one. There was Raspberry Ice with flowers streaked the color of crushed berries over white. Tempest was a pale matte strawberry and orange. Swans Olympic Flame was fire orange, and Ernst said this one has great foliage.

She had Little Scottie and Polventon Supreme right next to each other. Little Scottie has small yellow balls of flowers whose petals curl into each other, forming a honeycomb like pattern. Polventon Supreme is a formal decorative with flowers four times as large as Little Scottie but in form and color—a brilliant light yellow—they mirrored each other. Neon Splendor is a fusion of orange and yellow petals with a pinwheel center. I’m a Hottie is a blistering fuchsia pink.

It was hard to set your eyes on one of them without starting to calculate where you might work it into your own garden plan. Ernst says she starts anew every year, though she has seen the tubers spring back after a winter’s rest. She could dig them and store them. but she doesn’t care to worry with keeping them too dry or too wet.

Exhibition dahlias, she says, are best started from just one tuber. She begins in the spring after the danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed up. She says that air temperatures should be in the 50s.

Choose a site with well-drained soil. Ernst uses a low-nitrogen fertilizer, usually once at planting and again in August, but she confesses that it is “gardening by the seat of her britches.“

“Just put them in the ground and enjoy them” she says. “Anyone can do it”

? If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to .