The beautiful nostalgic, architectural flower that is the dahlia gives a lot, but it also takes plenty.
Just ask Brian Tunks who at the moment is ankle deep in mud in a paddock in Pialligo, pulling up hundreds of brown plants that once boasted the multicoloured blooms of the dahlia.
'Like digging up a sack of potatoes'
He and his team, with faithful pooch Leopold (Leo) by their side, are pulling up tubers for dividing, storing and planting for next year's display. The flowers will start to bloom again in high summer and are at their best in time for his Dahlicious festival in March.
"People see all the beautiful pictures [of the flowers], they see the glamour of it all. They don't see you falling over in the mud trying to dig out the equivalent of a sack of potatoes," he said, with a laugh.
But Tunks, the owner of Bison ceramics and glassware, has a couple of dahlia-related events up his sleeve in the coming days and weeks, helping fans of the flowers to also prepare for next year's blooms.
Tuber presale starts Saturday
Bison's big presale of dahlia tubers goes live on Saturday via the website bisonhome.com.
Tunks is sharing the event with Eddie Howard and Sam Reynolds from Blue Lane Flower Farm, pooling "our substantial collections to offer a great range of tubers and some hard-to-source varieties".
"We have people all over the country waiting for the sale - it's like The Hunger Games," Tunks said.
"It's a presale. So what we do is we cut them, divide them and put them to bed so they have a lovely sleep for the rest of winter going into spring and people pre-order them. They choose the colours and we only release limited numbers," he said.
"Our sale this weekend will be nuts."
And there will also be masterclasses on digging up and dividing tubers at his Pialligo potting shed on Saturday, July 27 and Saturday August 10, 10am to 1pm both days. Tickets are from Humanitix. The link for tickets is here.
"I'm doing it with Eddie Howard who has been growing dahlias with his father since the 1950s," he said.
Something beautiful at the end of the slog
While the dahlia blooms for weeks, the first frost ends their reign, and then the hard work for next year starts.
Tunks wouldn't have it any other way. He loves the reward at the end of the hard work.
"It's the sense of seeing something so incredibly beautiful come out at the end of the process," he said.
"It's also people's reactions to the flowers.
"There's a very childlike joy that people have with flowers. It's also a trigger for memory for a lot of people. Their grandparents' gardens or their mum or dad's garden or an uncle's.
"There's so much that ties in with that nurturing at home and particularly at the moment, with what's happening in the world, a lot of people are looking for that."
