KENORA SUNSET.		TRELYN KIWI.

	JOMANDA.		L.A.T.E.

	HAMARI ACCORD.		CORNEL.

	SIR ALF RAMSEY.		SIR BOBBY `M’ and KENORA VALENTINE.

I think the one thing I love about gardening, apart from the growing side, is the fact you can always look forwards to next year. You tell yourself you won’t make the same mistake again, of course you’ll make many others, but the expectation of a new start in which you’ll do better, is forever in your head. I suppose it’s inevitable that when you learn the art of producing a good-looking garden, and try to grow each and everything to the best of your ability, there will come a time when you need an extra incentive, to get the same buzz out of your craft. The perfect answer for me was to produce new dahlias. The excitement you get when a new flower is opening is incredible and the fact that you are the only person in the world that has that flower is hard to take in. I suppose for me, being a simple soul, it’s like the feeling Michael Angelo must have had, when he finished painting the Sistine Chapel, well perhaps not quite as much as that, but very near. So that is why I will try to explain the method I use to produce new cultivars. I am not an expert, but a bloke who loves the dahlia. Can I get one thing out of the way before I start? Throughout this article I will use the word cultivar or to be precise cultivars. Because in their wisdom the powers to be didn’t think the word variety or varieties was correct. So forgive me if I alternate between the two now again, because I was showing and growing before these rules were changed, in other words I’m getting on a bit.
 
From the title you know that bees will be mentioned somewhere; although that wasn’t the buzz I was talking about in the last paragraph. We all know they’re very industrious, they gather pollen and nectar from morning till night, but they’re not fussy where they get it. Some will say “Does it matter?” Ask a race horse owner if he’d allow his thoroughbred mare to get anywhere near that beautiful yet common carthorse and he’d shudder at the thought. Likewise, imagine the horror when a prize-winning Poodle returns home with a smile on her face one early morning, and after the allotted time she produces a litter of mongrel pups, disaster isn’t the word the owner would use. So when Mr. Bumble stumbles on that wonderful but fully open flower of your favourite giant, only to settle next on that beautiful pompon that everybody admires so much. Don’t be surprised at the outcome. That is why for me, the only way to produce new dahlias is by monitoring what I do. Okay there are a number of breeders who have wonderful results by growing separate groups adjacent to their neighbours, but they have no proof who the parents were. Accept for the seed bearer that is, also they can’t repeat the cross and believe me this is worth doing. In 2002 I was confident that I’d done the right thing the previous year in using the greenhouse to secure my crosses. The first blooms were mostly double, not spectacular but nice garden blooms but as the season advanced I got one or two corkers.

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