Let’s Talk Flowers and Blooms
Survey social media pages and you will soon discover that dahlias are addictive and gardeners are highly attracted to the variety and abundance of blooms that dahlias produce. Dahlias are no doubt a beautiful flower and a plant that provides much garden pleasure. Please take a peak at the varieties we have chosen to grow. Each of these flowers has some meaning to us. Evenings walking the dahlia patch, chasing slugs and dead heading, bring immense peace and fulfillment to the end of a day. It’s too bad on the Oregon Coast our season is at best two months of blooms.
All plants at Wild Horse Gardens are assessed for health and vigor. The following plants are varieties that have grown well in a marine climate, have sturdy stems, and do well in a vase. After our start up year of 30 tubers (they are so very addictive), we now grow almost 60 varieties and over 80 plants. We plan on adding another 20 in 2023.
This site is primarily to help people interested in growing dahlias. In the spring 2022, with our abundance of tubers, we shared to new homes based on social media posts to people who lost their tubers in storage. Many farms had sold out and getting replacements was a challenge. Our tubers were viable to the best of our knowledge and we only sent tubers out that had active eyes. As a living plant, much can happen in the care of other gardens that we can not control, but we can control the tuber before it leaves our garden.
Flowers that are variegated may produce many different bloom styles based on genes, weather, and time in the season. If you choose to grow dahlias, please be aware that not all varieties have consistent color or patterns over a growing season.
Below is a list of pages for the different varieties of dahlias we grow. We have tried to make note of special staking needs, flower abundance and quality in vase, as well as tuber production in the fall. Each page will provide useful information on the flower, plant, and attributes of each variety as it is grown in our garden in a cool summer climate. Some plants may be smaller or larger than what other websites suggest. This may be a factor of our marine climate, cool summer weather, and genetics of the tubers we have. If you want to rehome one of our tubers, you should expect them to preform similarly to the description as they share the same genetics. Tubers essentially clone the mother tuber. You will also find a note as to why we chose and keep growing the variety. Each flower has some degree of special meaning to us in the garden.