Hi, I've been growing a small handful of dahlias (typically 4-5
cultivars, now 7) for a bit over 5 years now and I'm thinking it's
time to be a bit more serious, so I'm looking for good source
material. An authoritative reference on my bookshelf could be nice - I
looked into what's available in Amazon, and it seems we have 3 similar
books - all of them were last published during the earlier years of
the last decade, most of these seem to be written for both North
American and European folks (McClaren seems to target only Americans),
and the major difference besides that seems to be how many pages they
devote to dahlia care vs. listing different cultivars.

Encyclopedia of Dahlias [Paperback]
Bill McClaren - 212pages
56 GBP

The Gardener's Guide to Growing Dahlias
Gareth Rowlands
Paperback: 160 pages
40 GBP

Dahlias: A Colour Guide
Ted Collins
Hardcover: 240 pages
20 GBP

Europe and North America differ greatly in the selection of cultivars
and the dominant classification system (NDS of UK vs ADS). It seems
that the leading dahlia nations on our side of the pond are UK and the
Netherlands, there's big online shops in both places that offer
hundreds of cultivars and they are of course within the sphere of
influence of NDS, so it makes sense for us Europeans to mostly pay
attention to their classification system.

Any book you'd recommend or avoid?

BTW I live near the Southern coast of Finland, dahlias grow nicely
here and reward you with months of beautiful flowers I hear there's
some people who even grow them in the Northern parts of the country.

No replies via e-mail please.

Risto Varanka wrote:
....
Any book you'd recommend or avoid?

sorry i am not into dahlias specifically,
but if you'd like to preview any books
before buying see if your local library
can obtain them for you to scan.


....
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songbird