Comment on this story
comment
Autumn is the time when everything in the garden falls to earth. It’s the season of heaviness, when fruit and leaves, seed pods and berries all sink to the ground. “Autumn” may sound pleasing to the ear, but “Autumn” more accurately captures the movement of the seasons.
Autumn is also promising. A few years ago, I found a nourishing gardening ritual tied to fall, and it’s become one of my favorite occasions of the season: the dahlia-tulip swap.
This exchange combines two flowers that are both popular in the United States, although neither is native to that country. They each herald a new season, with dahlias celebrating fall and tulips the beginning of spring.
Both offer colors for every palette, equally bright and cheerful or soft and muted. Although both are vibrant, I find dahlias softer and tulips crisper, in tune with the path of the sun. I often get the feeling that the seasons intertwine with the colors of flowers, and the hues of tulips and dahlias confirm that theory.
Tulips have been revered for centuries, while dahlias have seen their ups and downs. Just a generation ago, some gardening critics thought they lacked elegance and sophistication, being too flashy in their flounce. But dahlia downers have had to face dahlia defenders, including legendary gardener-author Eleanor Perenyi, among others.
A friend once criticized Perenyi’s love of dahlias: “You like big, showy flowers, don’t you?” Perenyi was unmoved. “To me, they’re lush, not vulgar,” she remarked, “and I love their colors, their willingness to bloom until the frost kills them, and, yes, their assertiveness.”
She was in good company. “The dahlia’s first duty in life is to display and show off,” wrote British gardener Gertrude Jekyll, “and to bear splendid flowers well above its leaves, and by no means droop your head.”
Former Washington Post gardening columnist Henry Mitchell agreed, writing in his book The Essential Earthman that he “could not imagine a more vigorous, spectacular, emerging flower for late summer.”
Perenyi, Jekyll and Mitchell would probably have been heartened by the renaissance in popularity of dahlias over the past twelve years. I also. Dahlias are the first flower I looked for in my garden, not only because they are so pretty to look at, but because they bloom when few other things are doing. In all their size and brightness and variety, they serve as the season’s final salute to summer.
When I first got into gardening in earnest, I began learning through books, the volumes by gardener-authors that chronicled their gardening lives. I was pleased to read that the gardeners I admired also appreciated dahlias. I also discovered the dahlia-tulip swap in these writings, which increased my appreciation for dahlias all the more.
This exchange takes place twice a year, right after each flower has had its day. In November, after the first frost, dig up the dahlia bulbs and plant the tulip bulbs. Then do the same in May after the tulips have finished their show. It’s so straightforward, so appealing in its simplicity, that I’ve now structured almost half of my garden around this idea. My system: I collect sacks of all kinds of tulips — double, fringed, and my favorite of all, parrot tulips — divide them by bloom time (early, mid, late season) and then toss them in the ground where the dahlia bulbs were easy to grow.
There is no pattern or order except when the individual bulbs are in bloom. A garden mentor, Katherine Schiavone, made this suggestion. It prolongs the time for tulip enjoyment and also brings an element of surprise. Next year’s bloom will certainly be different from last year’s, and any combination seems to work. In March and April I am guaranteed a pageant, a festive spring swirl that appears even before the buds of the leaves reach the trees.
The dahlia-tulip swap is a tried and tested ritual: removing dahlia tubers and inserting tulip bulbs. And tried and tested rituals not only define, but increase the joy of gardening. This feels like a way to root myself in my surroundings and the seasons. Other species also have these seasonal rituals. birds migrate south; Bears prepare for hibernation. Even squirrels bury their nuts in the fall like we bury our tulips, and they dig up their find when our tulips pop out of the ground.
The exchange also cements hope for spring. Fall is perhaps the gardener’s busiest season, and there’s a lot to do and get done: intense leaf raking, trimming apples, storing tools for winter, dividing perennials, scattering straw over beds. It’s a purposeful time — and when you add in the dahlia-tulip swap, it gets hopeful, too.
By storing the dahlia bulbs I can honor what was; Planting tulip bulbs allows me to plan what’s coming next and envision what spring will bring. “Half the interest of a garden,” wrote American historian and gardener Alice Morse Earle, “is the constant exercise of the imagination.” The anticipation of tulip colors drives my imagination through the winter when there are no planting jobs to do.
Research shows that a lot of the fun of a vacation lies in imaginative forecasting. The mere act of booking a ticket or reserving days on the calendar improves our spirits, a boost that lasts from the moment of planning to the moment the plane departs. November’s dahlia-tulip swap is the equivalent of gardening: the hopeful upsurge of bloom to come.
For me, this feeling counts twice over this winter. As the world is unstable, we need more to feed us as the days get shorter and the cold comes. The dahlia-tulip exchange gives us something more: the feeling that as we prepare for snow and sleet, the tulip bulbs are brewing beneath, preparing their spring greeting and reminding us of the bright dawn yet to come.
Catie Marron is the author of Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging Taught Me About Living. Find her on Instagram: @catiemarron.
