Q&A INTERVIEW: Amanda From DAHLIAaddict.com

A few years ago, I wanted several different hard-to-find dahlia varieties. And I found myself a subscriber to the DAHLIAaddict website as a way to consolidate information and locate those tubers I absolutely had to have. Every dahlia grower/seller has a different inventory, different days for launching sales for the season, different websites, pricing variation, and DAHLIAaddict allowed me the ability to organize a lot of information in one spot. I asked Amanda, an owner at DAHLIAaddict a couple questions about how the site was started, how it keeps up to date, dahlia trends and what she thinks about popular varieties such as Café au Lait.

How did DAHLIAaddict get its start? Can you explain a little about the history of the website?

The site got its start as an alternative to the Big List at the Colorado Dahlia Society website. In the winter of 2015 the Big List was still in its original form and had not been recently updated. I was new to dahlias and a resource of this kind seemed like a necessary enabler for my nascent dahlia mania. I had some web experience and my husband had even more, and between us we created what was meant to be a winter-time hobby. There was only the alphabet menu, the homepage and the inventory of about 50 suppliers which I loaded once a year. Prices were available, but nothing else, no sold out info or open dates. Over the last decade it's morphed into more than a full-time job.

What kind of dahlia-growing setup do you personally have? How did you get into dahlias?

I saw some absolutely huge, ruffly flowers in a bouquet at a local restaurant. This must have been a bit over a decade ago. The owner explained that these were dahlias grown by his mom. I had to have some even though I had barely been aware of dahlias before that. I still lean toward messy blooms the size of my head. I have room for about 90 plants on my urban lot. I get a ton of rain so I grow only in raised beds. My climate is mild enough that I can leave the clumps in the ground and dig and divide in the spring. I have taken a few years off because of health issues, but I hope next summer will be the summer I am back in action. I can't resist ordering though, and have a lot of dahlias in pots waiting for their moment to shine.

Do you have a few favorite dahlia types or varieties that you would recommend?

I seem to like dahlias with wavy petals or incurved petals the best. Spartacus was one of the first dahlias I grew. Waterlilies and anemone types also feature in my selection. I like oddballs, especially varieties that have petalloids, but are not collarettes. I come from a background of growing drought-tolerant plants that like lean soil, so I have a soft spot for varieties that grow vigorously with little pampering. If you visit the Trivia page on the DAHLIAaddict site, the '50 Most Offered Varieties' list features a number of such types.

Café au Lait remains a perennial favorite, ranking #1 on your list of most offered varieties and #7 on the most viewed. Why do you think this variety has captivated people for so long? I think CAL is an heirloom variety that was introduced in the 1960s. So it's been around for a while.

Café Au Lait owes its current popularity to Martha Stewart as I understand it. She raved about it in her magazine 'Living' probably some time in the aughts, propelling it from obscurity to a must-have wedding flower. I can't find info about the magazine issue that brought so much attention to CAL and dahlias as a cut flower, but for a non-zero number of people, that was their dahlia moment. Martha Stewart had millions and millions of subscribers, was and probably is one of the most recognized brands in the world, so there are a lot of people whose idea of a good dahlia was formed by Martha Stewart's jones for CAL.

How does DAHLIAaddict stay up-to-date on things such as when sellers begin offering dahlias and what varieties they each have in stock? Do you work closely with many of these sellers? Or is it a lot of research?

I like to go straight to the live catalog rather than request price lists from suppliers. I'm sure farmers don't need another task, and whenever there is any degree of separation from the source data, it comes with the possibility of errors. (Can you tell I was a database admin?) I start by scraping or copying the data, then I match it to the database by the variety name. Updates come to my attention via a webpage monitor and are made manually. Suppliers sometimes give me a heads up on openings which I welcome, and I try to also join newsletters and monitor pages on the supplier's site that might have opening day info, but things still slip by me. Sometimes I do a bit of a slog where I methodically go to dozens of sites to see if there is opening info I have missed, but most of the research happens when there is a variety in a catalog that is seemingly not a match for any in our database. It's not unusual for a "new" variety to actually be a spelling variant of a name already in the database so I try to look into it a bit before I just throw it in there. It's fairly important for the utility of the site that all the info about a variety is on one spot and not divided over multiple spellings.

What criteria do you use to decide which dahlia vendors to list on your site?

The criteria are pretty basic. The supplier has to be selling named varieties via mail order to the US or Canada in quantities of 3 or less. I mostly want to give people info and let them decide where to shop, but suppliers do get moved to 'reviews only' if their review history gets too poor. If the supplier sells rooted cuttings, we've begun asking if they are licensed and inspected so we can provide that info as actively growing plants are more likely to have hitchhiking pests. In the first years, I added any supplier that I found and rarely interacted with suppliers. Now, most of the suppliers are on the site because they have asked to be and pay an annual fee and we work with them a bit, mostly standardizing spelling. The flip side of helping people find exactly the varieties they are looking for is that it's fantastic advertising that sends customers who want exactly what the supplier has. 

You charge just $5.99 a year for membership, which seems very affordable. It seems particularly inexpensive when compared to how much some people might spend on dahlias!

We wanted supporting the site to be a fantastic value in hopes that most people that use the site would choose to do so. 

I've noticed a wave of what I might call premium dahlias recently that are mostly new introductions, that are priced $30 - $50 per tuber or higher. I know there is a lot of expense in creating new varieties. Do you think the cost has more to do with scarcity, or higher quality, unique colors, or a mix of these and other factors?

I think it's scarcity, novelty, social clout. I'm not an expert in psychology, but I'm pretty sure the higher price alone is a factor that can make them more desirable. It's something that people use, among other factors, to determine how much they personally value that variety.

The sale of dahlia cuttings has been growing in popularity. (Pardon the pun.) Are any of the listings on your site for cuttings, or are they all tubers unless noted on the seller’s website?

There have been suppliers selling rooted cuttings since I got into the hobby, but they were specialists and sold only cuttings. People could know that if it was a certain supplier, then the product was a cutting. Or if they ordered from a reseller, their stock was all imported. That changed abruptly this time last year. We had to sit down in one day in November 2023 and add indicators at the listing level. A big new supplier had joined the site that sold tubers and cuttings in equal measure, and we promise to have listings up within 24 hours when suppliers join the site so we wanted to get the change completed within that timeline. The change was triggered by the addition of one supplier, but we immediately put the capability to hard use as many more suppliers had added cuttings to their catalogs for the 2024 season. You can identify cutting listings by the little green sprout symbol next to the price. Imports have a little ship. Tubers are still the default, and have no symbol. 

How do you see the dahlia-growing community evolving in the next few years? Are there any trends you're excited about?

I think there will be less focus on unicorns. Or at least, there will be more unicorns to go around. A lot more farmers are trying their hand at hybridizing and meeting that craving for novelty and cut flower colors, and I think that will make for more satisfied shoppers. 

What advice would you give to someone just starting out with growing dahlias for the first time? I know the idea of staking the flowers and storing them over the winter might turn off some people on growing these flowers.

I recommend buying varieties that are inexpensive and get growing experience with those varieties. Almost always they are bomb-proof and make lots of good-storing tubers and that's a lot of the low price point. While they may lack novelty, they are still just as beautiful. In a sense, the very best of the "it" dahlias of yesterday become the workhorses of today.

Do you see any differences in the kinds of dahlias grown by hobbyists versus commercial growers? For example, are commercial growers more focused on things like color trends and blooms with stems that display well in a vase? Are hobby growers more interested in certain types than others?

It seems to me that hobbyists and collectors want a curated collection that meets their personal tastes and/or the broader tastes of their particular dahlia community. People growing or breeding for show success want a variety that meets the criteria that would allow it to win at an ADS show. Flower farmers need vase life, productivity and hardiness. And of course, some people want all or many of those things from their dahlia gardens.

Sometimes it feels like you're heading into battle when trying to find a specific type of dahlia tuber. They might be hard to find or rare, and of course, those varieties often have many people looking for them. I can't tell you how many times I've anxiously waited for a dahlia tuber seller to open for business, then their website crashes or they're sold out in minutes. Do you have any advice for people trying to locate those varieties? It would definitely help to use your website to organize your wishlist and who is selling those varieties. 

It's important to be there when the store opens, of course. I feel like suppliers have adjusted after the site crashes and gotten more capacity so I rarely see that now. Many have increased their supply of 'it' varieties and raised prices on those varieties so supply is getting closer to demand. Certain varieties will still sell out in the first five minutes, but it's not as often they do so after five seconds. DAHLIAaddict can certainly help to know which suppliers to line up for, and if people choose to subscribe, they will see all public open dates and times for the suppliers which has to be a big help, and we also offer a list of suppliers by open date. Many people use various website change monitors with good success to be on the spot for suppliers that do not announce an open date or time. There are suppliers who sell early access and let the market decide. I fully support farmers doing that. There are so many beautiful varieties that it doesn't deny anyone blooms or beauty for farmers to cash in on faddish cravings for a few varieties. We don't try to promote or access those sorts of private sales or memberships on DA because the utility of that info is so limited and it's also private by definition. We focus on what is openly available.

Thanks for the opportunity to chat about the site. I hope your gardens were beautiful this summer and that the odds are in your favor in the sales.

Yours,
Amanda

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