Something is happening with dahlias. This week, my Instagram feed has been shades of peach, sunshine yellow and café au lait. I spotted a bunch of cream-coloured dahlias in the lobby of the newly opened St. Clement hotel. And Flowerbx, the chic, floral delivery company who specialise in single-variety arrangements, currently has dahlias in 10 colours for sale on the website, including cotton white, mother of pearl, bruised plum and sex on the beach. The latter is a fleshy colour and named after the cocktail.
‘I love how intricate and flamboyant dahlias can be,’ says Lydia Stangroom. ‘Some truly don’t look real, and with thousands of varieties to discover and grow, there is always something new to fall in love with.’ Stangroom is the founder of Forty One Flowers and gardens on a sliver of land in South Devon (above). In June, Lily Allen was presented with one of her big and bouncy bouquets while performing at London’s O2 Arena. Stangroom’s tips for growing dahlias include planting seeds in rich, well-drained soil, ensuring the tubers don’t get too wet, and ignoring them for a period of time until they really get going, and then pinching out the growing tip. ‘There’s something exciting about growing dahlias from seed because every dahlia grown from seed is genetically unique, so there’s always the possibility of discovering, or breeding, a completely new variety,’ Stangroom says. ‘I think their enduring popularity comes down to the fact that they exist outside of trends. There are so many varieties in such an extraordinary range of forms, colours and textures, that there really is a dahlia for everyone.’
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Tiffany & Co. has caught the bug. Their most recent Blue Book high jewellery collection is called Hidden Garden, the brainchild of artistic officer Nathalie Verdeille, in close partnership with the Tiffany Design Studio. It was shaped by the legacy of one of history’s most important jewellery designers, Jean Schlumberger, and by references to nature and horticulture: vines, a pineapple, fantastical birds and, of course, dahlias.
The Dahlia parure is composed of three unique pieces featuring overlapping petals, cast in yellow gold and platinum and set with tsavorites. A green-hued, grossular garnet, tsavorites were discovered by British geologist Campbell Bridges, in 1967, near the Tsavo National Park on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Tiffany & Co., then under the exacting eye of Henry Platt, introduced tsavorites into their designs in 1974.
Rare and vibrant tsavorites are about 1,000 times rarer than emeralds. ‘This year’s collection stands out for the large number of exceptional gems it contains,’ says Victoria Reynolds, chief gemmologist at Tiffany & Co. ‘While we are showing extraordinary diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires we are also pushing beyond traditional selections by adding very unexpected gem types and unusual combinations that achieve particularly striking silhouettes.’ The use of special stones is, I think, a fitting tribute to the dramatic dahlia, the flower of the season.
Alfie Nickerson (above), founder of Burnt Fen Flowers, grows dahlias in Norfolk. Pompom dahlias are his floral fixation, selected for their extended vase life. ‘They come in every colour and shape, and they are the most prolific flower we grow,’ he says. ‘A plant that flowers for three months is an amazing thing, and without them, I probably wouldn’t be able to be a flower grower.’
His process of framing dahlias has evolved. ‘Dahlias are tubers, so I now grow them as perennials. I used to lift them and store them over winter, but I now leave them in the ground all year round. This is because our winters aren’t too cold, and we cover them with muck and straw, so as long as it isn’t -7°C for a week, they are usually much stronger and better plants than when you lift them,’ he says. ‘The most important stage is when they have just sprouted; you need to protect them from slugs and make sure they get off to a strong start.’
It is no surprise that, with their remarkable geometric patterns, Tiffany & Co. isn’t the only one to fall under the dahlia’s dazzling spell, and they have a rich cultural history, particularly in Victorian flower painting, botanical illustration and the decorative arts. The Aztecs valued dahlias for their practical, medicinal, and nutritional uses rather than just their appearance. The Danish flower painter Johan Laurentz Jensen depicted dahlias alongside pineapple and grapes in 1835, when the dahlia was still relatively rare in Europe, and they appear in Virginia Woolf’s diaries and letters about the garden at Monk’s House in East Sussex. Her husband, Leonard, bought them frequently, and Woolf's descriptions often emphasise their bright, blazing colour and associations with high summer. René Lalique first introduced the dahlia motif to his eponymous brand in 1931 and his hard-to-come-by Art Deco glass and crystal jewellery, featuring the same motifs, sometimes come up for auction at Christie’s.
Dahlias might be less ubiquitous than roses, lilies and irises, but their rise coincided with the 19th-century passion for collecting, breeding and displaying exotic flowers. The dahlia was not just a pretty bloom; it was a horticultural novelty and a status symbol. Long, thanks to Tiffany, may our fascination with it continue.