...and colour as bright as your cheek

Dahlias.

Where should I start? My father was a man obsessed - he grew dahlias for showing, and did it very well, although he no longer does so. My childhood was measured in dahlia growing seasons. From the taking of cuttings, setting out in the garden, the first buds, the smell of mothballs to deter earwigs. The forest of stems, rising up from a floor of straw. Hide and seek between the rows.

As showing season came, the smell of wet newspapers to hold the stems in place during transport. The conical vases designed to show off each perfect bloom to its best advantage. Rainbows of flowers, preened with paintbrushes. A litany of names I could reel off, but remember only vaguely now - Evelyn Foster, Rothesay Robin (my favourite), Klanlstad Kerkrade...

Second class blooms were sold to the local grocer, with me carrying them the short distance, blooms down, to keep the water in the stems. What a smell. What a sight.

And the shows - hundreds of blooms of endless types, sizes and colours. Only six or seven, I could look at the flowers and note imperfections - one bloom larger than the others, one gone 'daisy-eyed', drooping stems, a petal nibbled by an earwig. The types - cactus, decoratives, the semi-cactus; and the sizes, checked scrupulously with judging rings: giants, large, medium. But best of all, the pompoms. My father never grew these, much to my disappointment. I loved their neatness, their roundness, their firmness, and best of all, they were on a scale a small child could appreciate. A handful of perfection, which I was never allowed to touch.

And so, now I have my own garden, do I indulge my misty-eyed reminiscences? Well, I've grown a few, but the less showy cousins of the prima donnas grown by my father. The Bishop of Llandaff (but who hasn't?) and his children grown from seed. A few bedding dahlias (the shame!) and one or two other cultivars. But I have not indulged my desire for the pompoms. Child-sized wonders will be left in the past; but still, when I visit the Malvern Autumn show this month, I'll check for imperfections, and my palms will itch to cup the perfect, tiny blooms in my hands and inhale the scent of my childhood.

The title of the post comes from a poem by Lord Holland:

"The Dahlia you brought to our isle
Your praises for ever shall speak:

Mid gardens as sweet as your smile,

And colour as bright as your cheek."