There’s something about flowers that has always felt like home to me.
As a little girl, I spent countless hours wandering through my grandfathers’ gardens. Both of them had a real gift for growing things, and visiting them meant discovering what was in bloom or what could be eaten from the vegetable crop. An abundance of different colours, textures, and varieties that changed with the seasons. They were places of curiosity and quiet joy, and they left a lasting impression on me. So when we bought the farm, it felt completely natural that I would be drawn straight back to flowers. In my mind, I wanted to grow everything—rows and rows of colour—but dahlias quickly became the real obsession.
This will be our second season growing dahlias here on the farm, and it’s safe to say we’re still learning every single day. That’s part of what makes them so addictive. No two plants are quite the same, and each season brings something new to figure out.
This year, I’ve taken things a step further and started collecting seeds from the dahlia seed heads to grow in the glasshouse. The plan is to nurture them through the cooler months and plant them out in spring, once the frosts have passed. What I’ve found especially fascinating is the difference between growing dahlias from tubers versus seeds. When you plant a tuber, you know exactly what you’re going to get it’s essentially a clone of the original plant. But seeds are a completely different story. Each seed carries a mix of genetic material, meaning it can produce a hybrid of the parent plant and whatever dahlia happened to pollinate it. The result is something entirely new.
There’s a real sense of anticipation in that process. You can collect seeds from a flower you love, but when it blooms the following season, it may surprise you completely—different colours, petal shapes, or forms you’ve never grown before.
I imagine it feels a bit like opening a gift you didn’t wrap yourself, there’s something incredibly rewarding about growing dahlias this way—watching them develop from seed and discovering what they become.
I’m looking forward to seeing what spring brings, and sharing the results as they start to bloom.
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