But there is room in my flower border for other zinnia varieties as well.

 Below you can see some Fruit Bowl and State Fair Zinnias.

Before summer slips away I thought I'd share one of our recent garden projects, our new dahlia bed. We have a patch of dirt in a mostly unvisited part of our side yard. It's usually out of sight out of mind with this dirt patch and over the years it had been an artichoke patch (never produced enough to keep) an herb garden (too far away from the kitchen door) and lastly a home for old roses. When we replaced an old rose, we relocated it here and let them live out the remainder of their lives in peace. But last winter when I was pouring through an online dahlia catalog an idea came to me to use this patch for something really fun. I asked my gardeners to dig out the old roses and prepare the soil, then my husband installed a simple low waste watering system and I ordered 25 tubers, plus dug up a dozen tubers from our flower border. I then got to planting and labeling and waited for that beautiful first bloom. It has been so fun to check it out each morning, cup of coffee in one hand and my flower shears in the other. Dahlia blooms have really given a boost to my flower arrangements this summer!

Dahlias bloom from mid summer through early fall, die back in winter and because they are tubers, and if your ground freezes, they must be dug up and safely stored. Our ground does not freeze and we can let the tubers sleep all winter long in the ground. Dahlias will continue to bloom throughout the fall and get bigger every year.

Floret Dahlias is the gold standard for purchasing dahlia bulbs here in the US. They sell out quickly, as do their seeds. There are gorgeous dahlia gardens around the world and this is the time to visit them. We have quite a famous dahlia garden in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Buchart Gardens in Canada has a fabulous dahlia border that we visited a decade ago. I remember my husband having to drag me away.

I know this is a knitting blog and I promise I have some knitting posts to come. My garden seems to hijack my blog every summer and I hope you enjoy reading about my passion for gardening as much as I love sharing it.  Until next time, take care my friends. xo Kristen