8 things you need to know about growing dahlias

What would us gardeners do without dahlias? If your garden needs more colour in summer: plant some dahlias. If it needs more colour in autumn: plant some dahlias. If it needs some tall plants to make the back of the garden more colourful: plant some dahlias. If you’re looking for some easy cut flowers to grow that come back year after year: plant some dahlias. If there’s a colour missing in your garden (except blue!): there’s a dahlia for it.

Lift them at the end of autumn and store the tubers indoors and they’ll be ready for planting again next spring. Get in the habit and you’ll have dahlias for years and years. In mild, sheltered areas, where soil drains very well you can leave them outside over winter and place a thick layer of compost on top. Even easier.

And there are literally thousands of them, in so many variations of flower colour, shape and size that it’s hard to say that you don’t like dahlias! Right now they are pumping out colour in back gardens, balconies and allotments nationwide like a party guest still dancing the night away and wondering why everyone else is yawning and about to go home.

• Alan Titchmarsh’s favourite dahlias
• Single-flowered dahlias to grow for wildlife
• Dahlia and cosmos pot display
• How to grow dahlias from seed

Dahlias originate from South America, mainly from the high plains of Mexico at an elevation of 1,500-3,700 metres, with some species endemic to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica, with 42 species in total. Historians think that dahlias first arrived in the UK at the end of the 18th century and legend has it that the first plants were raised from seed at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew where the gardeners