Canberra man Graeme Davis has been elected as the president of the Dahlia Society of Australia. Photo: Graeme Davis.
If you grow dahlias in the Canberra region, you’ve likely heard of Graeme Davis.
If you don’t grow dahlias, well you’re missing out.
In late 2024, Graeme was elected the president of the Dahlia Society of Australia. With Graham being based in Canberra and running multiple dahlia trial gardens in the capital, his appointment will see Canberra gardeners further benefitting from the lifetime of knowledge he brings to the arena.
Graeme explains that the dahlia – despite specimens looking like they’ve walked off the pages of English country gardens – is native to the mountains of Mexico and can be grown all over the world in a wide range of climates, from the extremes of Alaska to the tropics of Australia, but here in Canberra, we’re particularly lucky with our conditions.
“The Canberra region offers good growing conditions for the dahlia. You only have to go 200 km away and you would get a lot more trouble,” Graeme tells Region.
“If you go 200 km north from here or towards the coast, it’s more humid, so there are more red spider mites, or if you go 200 km west it’s drier, which causes a lot more problems with western flower thrips.”
Graeme Davis runs test gardens in Canberra and is a passionate dahlia grower. Photo: Graeme Davis.
Graeme won’t deny that the Canberra region suffers from these pests, but says the occurrence and severity are much reduced and that your biggest predators here are snails and slugs.
“They are a premium product; they are soft and hard to transport, which also means that they are premium to pests. They’ll attract every snail and slug for half a mile, as they’ll all want to eat them,” says Graeme.
“But if you can get over that, they sort of look after themselves in large part.”
In complete contradiction to the self-servicing plant Graeme describes, he goes on to tell of the lifetime he has spent on the details of dahlias, and how to grow them for the perfect flowers that he then shows on the agricultural show circuit.
“What really attracted me to the flowers I grow is that it’s all about symmetry, getting everything sitting in the right places.The challenge is to get it to do that consistently. Grow with the right stem; sit at the right angle and with the largest flower.”
Graeme swears he is far from obsessive but does recognise there is a big difference between growing dahlias for shows and growing dahlias as a home gardener. A large part of the work Graeme does with dahlias is around breeding cultivars that are easy growing and ideal for beginners.
I grew Graeme’s GD Lynn in my garden this summer, and for me, it was the perfect no-intervention plant. Its strong central stem combats the issue of dahlias needing staking to prevent them falling over and it bloomed and re-bloomed again and again, producing large, striking orange flowers all through summer.
“You can’t kill it with a stick; it’s what it should be. You just want your plants to grow. It’s meant to be a strong plant; it doesn’t really need staking,” says Graeme.
Dahlias come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Photo: Graeme Davis.
Graeme also runs two test gardens in Canberra where breeders can send him new cultivars of dahlias and he puts them to the test, growing two of each to see how well they grow. He’s a firm believer that despite people getting excited about growing the newest dahlias, new isn’t always best.
“It’s not every year we get something better than we already have.”
Not always chasing the next best thing, Graeme spends a lot of his energy on stock selection with the aim of always honing in on the best of each plant each year to reproduce the most valued characteristics.
“Dahlias have highly complex genetics; their genome is bigger than ours. With a genome that big, things can change, which is why we spend a lot of time on stock selection.”
The underlying subtext in everything Graeme advocates for is to do as you please when it comes to dabbling in dahlias. As long as you are growing dahlias, he doesn’t care if you pronounce it dah-lia or day-lia and he doesn’t think people need to be obsessive.
He does, however, think that beginners should start with a variety of dahlia that’s easy to grow, like the GD Lynn, which helps minimise people banging their heads against the wall with the more difficult varieties. Graeme shares that there are varieties even he struggles with and beginners should take advantage of the knowledge of an experienced local grower in their region to get them started with the right dahlia for their skill level.
To find out more about the Dahlia Society of Australia head to its website or Facebook page.
