The weather this autumn just seems to keep on giving with us enjoying lots of fine and settled conditions. Certainly enhancing my feelings of this being my favourite time of the year.

            A few weeks ago I did feel the cooler conditions had arrived and were here to stay so duly packed my working shorts away and my legs covered back up for another year, a blessing I dare say for lots of people, but there’s certainly been a few days where I’ve been tempted to reconsider that decision with the weather feeling that bit unseasonably warm.

            With the weather forecasters advising us of the high possibility of a windy time ahead over the coming months, I intend to make the most of each bonus day that we are getting in the garden thanks to this Indian Summer.

            Without a September frost to knock the dahlias, something that I feel we’ve had the last few years just enough to set them back but not finish these beauties that originally hail from Central American off, they’re really putting on a display now. I must admit when I returned from my holiday at the start of August to see no change in their growth due to the dry summer we had, I was thinking the exotic display dahlias give to our garden was something we would miss out on this year. This extended summer has also meant our growing season is lasting a little longer than usual up here in Scotland, ensuring that the likes of our dahlias are still getting enough time to realise their full potential.

            Dahlias are so much fun too! They’re a versatile plant, as long as you add a bit of compost or good old farmyard manure into the soil at planting time to give it a wee boost they’ll do well either amongst other plants in your garden, or you could grow them in a row or two for a more traditional display. No worries if you don’t have that kind of space as they’ll even do well in a container just as long as you keep on top of the watering and don’t let the compost dry out.

Regular dead heading of the flowers as they start to go over will keep them flowering until the weather in Scotland gets too much for them, generally that will be in October, or pick them with a purpose as dahlia flowers are perfect as a cut flower.

If you get a chance to visit a larger display in a National Trust garden or that in one of our historic houses, on closer look you’ll see there are many different types of dahlia flowers. In fact, according to the National Dahlia Society there are officially 15 different types based on their flower shape and petal structure.

The good thing is lots of these types have easy names to remember describing simply what we are seeing.

‘Single’ flowered dahlias are a single ring of petals that circle around a central disc. If you like gardening for wildlife in mind this type of dahlia is the one for you over the more elaborate flowering types of dahlias which can pose more of a problem to the pollinators trying to access the pollen if indeed any has been produced at all, as often these extra petals replace the reproductive parts completely.

With their own individual subtle differences like curved or flat petals that could be rounded or flat, have pointed tips or rounded being shaped like saucers or form spheres; ‘Cactus’, ‘Waterlily’, ‘Anemone’ and ‘Paeony’ all in their way resemble the plants they are grouped after. Even a ‘Star’ type dahlia is straightforward to spot.

I’m sure with some of the other types where getting the correct group type isn’t so instantly recognisable, members of the Scottish National Chrysanthemum and Dahlia Society are not going to judge us too hard if we got our ‘Ball’ and ‘Pompom’ types muddled up. They do look similar though the latter are generally smaller than the former and have a spiral arrangement of curved petals to form the ball or flattened sphere. The shape of a ‘Pompom’ dahlia is that of nearly a perfect sphere.

On the subject of the good folks of the ‘Dahlia Society’, and indeed that of all the other garden groups out there, please don’t be put off becoming a group member thinking this is only for extreme enthusiasts or experts, far from it as all those groups are just full of gardeners keen to learn more on their specific point of interest. For your often small membership fee, you’ll have access to a whole load of insider information and human contact with ‘old-hands’ more than happy to share their knowledge with you. You can often get access to seed and plants not generally available, even discounts on plants, tools and other equipment.

Autumn is all about starting to winding down the garden for the year but this one keeps giving us an extra day and more of gardening, its not going to last forever but I’m determined to make the most of them.