Dahlia arrangement featuring Café au Lait

Hello there! I hope you enjoyed an Indian Summer wherever you live. The weather here has been amazing. This year’s summer was disappointing. According to the weather bureau, there were just seven days without rain! But, of course, when everyone went back to school and work, summer finally arrived. Two weeks ago we even had temperatures of 30ºC and over, which is a bit much for me. However, this week is chillier and I have to accept summer is truly over.

I don’t like change. I didn’t want summer to end, and now I want these beautiful golden autumn days to last forever. I am so glad I have my dahlia garden. I think I need autumn flowers more than spring flowers. A visit to the dahlia garden always lifts my spirits. Being able to cut a bunch of flowers every few days to bring home is such a joy.

The leaves of my dahlias have turned brown and dry due to the warm weather. The plants look terrible. So, unfortunately, no more pictures of my plot. There are still plenty of flowers, though. In this blog post, I am sharing a simple dahlia arrangement I made, featuring Café au Lait dahlias. You will find step-by-step instructions with pictures at the end of the post, so do try this at home!

Dahlia arrangement ingredients

For this dahlia arrangement I used:

• 2 stems of dahlia Café au Lait
• 10 stems of dahlia Zundert Mystery Fox
• 1 stem of dahlia Preference
• 3 stems of Chocolate Cosmos
• 1 branch of Virginia Creeper

Dahlia Café au Lait

What more is there to say about the Café au Lait dahlia? Everybody loves it, everybody wants to grow it. The flowers are large and pillowy with silky petals. Their soft and creamy colour can vary from an off-white to a pink blush. Café au Lait dahlias look beautiful on their own. I often display one flower in a small vase. It is a super-fast and simple way to create a floral display. They also mix well with other smaller blooms and almost all dahlias.

Dahlia Zundert Mystery Fox

Do you remember the picture of my yellow-orange ball dahlias in last month’s blog post? I think I am growing too many orange ball varieties this year. One of them has to go.

Cornel Brons is new to me and I am loving it. It is an orange version of Cornel with an unusual hint of bronze. Cornel is a red variety and a favourite with long sturdy stems and lots of flowers. It’s also a very good cut flower producer. You can see my buckets full of dahlias in last year’s dahlia garden review.

I am not ready to let go of Maarn yet though it isn’t performing as well as last year. So I was doubting between Zundert Mystery Fox and Jomanda. I am growing both for the first time this year and at first, I didn’t see much difference between them. But after a while, I realised Zundert Mystery Fox isn’t orange at all! It is a shade of red, crimson maybe? Because of this, it combines beautifully with Café au Lait dahlias. It’s a keeper!

Zundert is a small town in the south of the Netherlands where the annual flower parade takes place. The floats in the parade are made from thousands of dahlias, it’s incredible. I have no idea where the mystery fox comes in.

Dahlia Preference

Dahlia Preference is a small cactus dahlia in a beautiful salmon pink colour. It’s not a showy flower, it looks quite discrete in the garden. You can easily pass it, looking for the Café au Laits or Totally Tangerine dahlias. It is a very productive variety though, lots of buds and lots of flowers. I like the fact that the flowers are not that large. They are a nice size for arranging and they last a long time in the vase. A must grow!

Chocolate Cosmos

Most cosmos are grown from seed, but chocolate cosmos is grown from tuberous roots. They have much in common with dahlias, they also originate from Mexico. Like dahlia tubers, the roots are not winter hardy and cannot tolerate frost. The flowers are small and a very dark red. The colour resembles that of dahlia Black Jack. It’s not easy to photograph. And yes, they do have a chocolate scent, but it is not very strong. I still have to eat chocolate to meet my chocolate cravings.

Virginia Creeper or American ivy

This is a climbing vine that can cover walls and fences. Te leaves turn bright red and orange in autumn. A house covered with Virginia Creeper is a spectacular sight in autumn, I love it. The branch I cut was just starting to turn colour.

Steps:

1. Choose a vessel. I used a vintage ceramic vase, it’s one of my favourites. It was made by Mosa Maastricht.
2. Add the branch of Virginia Creeper to the vessel. This is just one, very long, branch.
3. Remove all leaves from the dahlias. Add the Café au Lait dahlias to front and right side of the vessel.
4. Add the stems of Zundert Mystery Fox dahlias to the left and back side of the vessel so that they fill out the vase.
5. Trim and nestle the stem of Preference dahlia among the Zundert Mystery Fox dahlias on the lower left side.
6. Lead the branch of Virginia creeper around the back of the vase and weave it through the dahlias at the front so that it exits the arrangement at the right side.
7. Add the Chocolate Cosmos so that they arc out to the right.
8. Enjoy!

Have a lovely week and hope to see you next time.