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Last year I fell deep into the contentious, frustrating, glorious and gratifying world of dahlias. When I get interested in something, I approach it the way I’ve been taught to approach any subject: I go deep and wide. I learn about the history and I learn about the present; I get obsessed with both the practical and the political. And there are so, so many politics to dahlias — and an expanding marketplace trying to make sense of itself. Look quickly, and you might think the dahlia wars are about a bunch of intense hobbyists fighting over obscure varietals. Look longer, and you’ll see a bunch of people trying to figure out what it means to value others’ labor and their own.
But first, a little backstory. The dahlia was cultivated by the Indigenous peoples in parts of what is now Mexico and Central America for centuries, grown primarily for its nutrient-rich tubers. Spanish colonizers brought seeds back to Europe, and gardeners from across the continent grew and hybridized and expanded the number of species. Today, there are dahlias that grow from one foot to six feet, in fifteen different “groups” (aka distinct shapes), and in every color other than blue. There are dahlias that look like roses, dahlias that look like waterlilies, dahlias that look like lacy balls, dahlias that are thisssssss-close-to-black and dahlias that look like someone tie-dyed them….dahlias as big as a dinner plate and dahlias as small as a golf ball.
Which is one of the reasons dahlias are so popular: it’s very, very fun to “collect.” But there are other reasons, too. Martha Stewart is generally attributed with (re)popularizing the dahlia by centered it in wedding flower arrangements, which helped build demand from flower growers. But the dahlia is also a perfect hobby flower: it’s just persnickety enough to be a real challenge, it pumps out a steady stream of blooms from late July all the way to your first frost, and every year they multiply. Like, ridiculously.
This is the part I often have to explain to non-gardeners: one tuber, planted in the ground, creates one plant. But while that plant is blooming above ground, it’s growing a bunch of OTHER, ADDITIONAL TUBERS below ground. One plant creates anywhere from two to twenty babies that you can plant, trade, or sell the following year. (You can also take “cuttings” from a dahlia plant and root them to create new baby clones….or grow dahlias by harvesting seed, which, unlike growing from tubers or cuttings (which produce clones of the original plant) yields a *whole new dahlia* that’s a mix. of the plant from which you harvested and whatever other dahlias bees visited nearby. Wild!!!!!
A lot of “seedlings” are not great — a mix of traits that are less desirable — but for every 20 throwaways, there’s usually one that’s doing something interesting or gorgeous or fun. You grow the tubers of that dahlia for a few more years to make sure the genes are stabilized, and then you have a new dahlia that you can sell or share. You can sell that new creation for whatever you want, but once it leaves your property, those new owners can then sell the tubers and cuttings and breed with its seeds.
Historically, most hybridizers were hobbyists — if they farmed full-time, their primary income source was still selling tubers (of dozens of dahlias, not just what they’ve bred) and cut flowers. There were a few breeders who attempted to trademark their creations (the way that many rose breeders do) but the vast majority bred for fun, bred for recognition by their local or national dahlia association, or bred as a lure to draw customers to their shop (where they would buy many other dahlias).
And here’s another crucial bit: because anyone can buy a dahlia and then sell its tubers, big companies (Longfield, Breck’s, Bluestone, pretty much any dahlia you buy in a bag from a store like Home Depot, Costco, Aldi, or even your local nursery) began importing dahlia “clumps” en masse from farms in the Netherlands. These companies are usually perfectly fine when it comes to things like tulips, but remember: dahlias are finicky. Most of the time, the dahlias from these companies are mislabeled, have degraded DNA (which leads to ‘blown’ centers, aka they don’t really look like what they’re supposed to), and/or they’re diseased, usually with leafy or crown gall, both of which can infect the soil and spread to other dahlias.
Crucially, these imported dahlias are VERY CHEAP. Usually around $8 for a two-pack, if not less. I think of it like buying cheap jewelry off Instagram: it looks so great in the picture, but then it comes and not only does it not look like what you thought you bought, but it turns your earlobes green.
Small farmers usually charge anywhere between $8 (for one tuber) all the way up to $45 (for a very rare tuber, or ‘unicorn’). Plus you have to pay shipping — which adds up! — and you usually have to buy from several farms (I have personally purchased from…..too many). Oh, and it’s not like you can buy a tuber once and have that plant forever: most growers have to “store” their tubers over the winter (there are about a dozen different strategies on how to do this, but you’re aiming for between 40 and 50 degrees and 85 and 95% humidity which is….not as easy to find/achieve as you might think).
So people lose their tubers to rot and shrivel, or maybe a gopher comes along and snacks on it when it gets in the ground, or maybe you grow the tuber and it showed sign of disease (I’m not even going to get into the politics of dahlia mosaic virus) and you have to throw the entire plant. Which is all to say: if you grow dahlias, you always need more dahlias.
You can see how this would create a pretty wild and unruly market, made even more wild and unruly by new technologies: the ability to sell online to anyone in the country, sure, but also Facebook groups where new offerings. are announced, discussed, and fetishized (the biggest is Growing Dahlias, but there are dozens); subscription databases like Dahlia Addict that list dahlia farms/their holdings/opening dates, which start in September and go April; bots that crawl websites for the slightest restock; and high-octane competitions to nab unicorns the second (literally) that a farm opens. All of these factors have combined to create what has become known as the dahlia wars.
When I stopped using Twitter last year, I wondered what I would do with all that online time. Lots of stuff, but in part: hang out in online dahlia forums. I’m mostly a lurker, but it’s where I learned that the cheap imported tubers I bought did indeed have gall, where I’ve come to venerate the work of dahlia breeder Kristine Albrecht, and where I’ve read a whole bunch of people try and process their feelings about the dahlia wars, which are also their feelings about hobbies, and inflation, and the irrationality of capitalist markets.
A few themes I’ve observed:
1.) Cheap Product is Expensive
A post I’ve seen at least 300 times: a new(ish) dahlia grower (or. at least new to the group) posts a picture of their “score” of dahlia tubers at a big box store. Alternately, someone posts a screenshot of a variety for sale online, wondering if they should go for it, since their dahlia budget is limited.
The comments on these posts are swift and predictable: don’t do it, the tubers are likely diseased, you’re unlikely to get what you think you’re getting….and then a few people swing in to say I grew tubers last year from [big box store] and they were fine, with an occasional “this group worries too much about disease” poster to make things spicy.
The (very attentive) moderators generally close the comments on these posts after an hour, but the pattern is established. Maybe you don’t care if you get what’s on the picture — but you should care about whether you’re inviting a disease into your garden that will infect the rest of your dahlias (through the soil, through bug transmission, through clippers). Oftentimes, you don’t know a plant is diseased until you dig up the tubers — and that plant may have appeared perfectly healthy the year before. The hard task, particularly in an online forum, is communicating that 1) your sick plants may have looked fine this year, but they’re going to look like shit next year; 2) you’ll likely have infected all your other dahlias, which will also soon look like shit; 3) if you trade or give tubers to other people without disclosing that you have gall, they will then unwittingly spread it all over their garden.
Shitty behavior, all around! But people will do a lot to justify spending less money — even when people suggest that there are many other ways to obtain cheaper tubers, both online and via local dahlia society sales.
2.) People Nevertheless Feel Entitled to Cheapness
Many of the same people who comment on the photos of big box store dahlias also participate in discussions I think of as “why is this world I helped create so crappy.” More specifically: why is there so much competition, why are there are these new people here, why are people so crazy for “unicorns” even though they’ll go out of fashion/demand soon and there’ll be a NEW set of unicorns, when did tubers get so damn expensive.
Some of this commentary is explicit or implicit gatekeeping: there are so many new growers, so many new small farms, so many new varietals, and that abundance has changed the feel of growing dahlias. Some of the antipathy towards higher prices is about, well, money — but a lot of it, I think, is about nostalgia for a different period, with different imperatives, different costs, different marketing styles. (I personally delight in the old school purveyors who still run their businesses entirely as mail order, but I also understand that that model is unthinkable for most).
For example: earlier this month, Floret (a medium-sized seed operation headed by Erin Benzakein that was made famous, in part through Martha Stewart, in the mid-2010s….and now has a Discovery series about it) launched their much-anticipated line of Floret-bred zinnias, celosia, and dahlia seeds. These varietals are absolutely gorgeous — and, moving forward, will also be the primary source of income for the farm. One packet of the zinnia seeds costs $19.95. (For comparison, a package of zinnia seeds from most seed companies usually runs around $3-5).
On the FB Group for Floret Growers (yes I am a part of too many of these groups) there was a robust discussion of the “value” of these seeds when they were first released. Many commenters pointed to the years of research and development that went into the varieties. Others underlined their quality, their uniqueness, their utility — the seeds might not seem like much, but they have tremendous value. (Even casual zinnia growers will perceive as much immediately — these varieties are gorgeous).
Another commenter pointed out that of course she has to charge this much — how else would she pay for all the Instagram videos, the free online courses, the website chocked with grow information, the short film about a Ukrainian clematis grower, the detailed booklet on seed starting and harvesting that comes with each order. The tone was derisive — as in, maybe if they did less flashy shit, then these damn seeds wouldn’t cost so much.
But the comment inadvertently underlines the value of a Floret purchase: you’re making the entire business, including all that free, accessible content, into something sustainable. You can choose not to participate in that model. You can keep buying the $4 seeds. Or you can opt-in. The decision is entirely up to you. But that doesn’t mean that the price point is, too.
3.) What’s the Difference Between a Small Business and a Business?
Much of the strife in the group stems from a fuzziness between these two categories. If someone is selling their extra tubers in order to cover expenses for their garden (and, in essence, make it cost-neutral) — are they a business? If they have a website, are they a business? What can customers expect or demand from a business — and how does that change when they’re a “small” business (aka, mostly just you) vs. a corporation? And how can a grower communicate those expectations in a way that buyers can understand?
When you dig up a clump of dahlia tubers, you have to figure out how to store it, label it, keep it “stable” through the winter, and then, once you bring those dozens or hundreds of varieties out in the Spring, you have to do quality control, sort by order, buy and assemble packaging, affix postage, and take it to be shipped — it’s a lot. It’s one thing if you have an entire team trained to do these things. But if the only way you’re making money is by doing most of the labor yourself, then you want to simplify the process in any way possible.
For that reason, most dahlia growers decline to “combine shipping” if you place several orders — whether that’s over the course of several months (some growers add new varietals or restock ones that have been sold out after they’re sure how many tubers survived the winter) or several orders in one day (a side-effect of the dahlia wars — if there’s a variety you really, really want, you have to go in the shop, put it in your cart, and check out immediately — no time to waste looking at other varieties. You can come back for them later).
Does this get expensive? Sure does! (Depending on. how many dahlias are in an order, shipping is usually between $10 and $25). Do customers bristle at paying for shipping just generally in the age of widely normalized free shipping? Yes! Does that mean that small growers can or should behave like Amazon? No! Are they trying to exploit you, the customer, by not combining shipping? Also no! It’s just a TON of work to sort through and group every order and then refund or modify shipping costs. Work that you didn’t pay for, with the sort of time/labor-loss that a small business can’t afford.
As customers, we’ve become so accustomed to massive-scale corporate buying experiences that we’ve lost the grace and empathy we’ve historically extended to smaller operations run by people we know and regularly see. That applies to grumbling over shipping costs — but also sending nasty emails if a tuber is mislabeled or for some reason doesn’t sprout. Whatever anger someone has about a dahlia they bought from a trusted small grower is the result of them not functioning like a multi-million dollar corporation that has exchanged fair compensation and ethical production practices for low prices and “total consumer satisfaction.”
4.) Millennials Gonna Millennial
As I think about my own potential, somewhere-in-the-future dahlia micro-farm, which my best friend on the island and I are currently sketching out, I think of the very millennial tendency to turn all of our hobbies into side hustles. Sometimes because we have to (because our main hustles do not pay enough) but sometimes because monetization transforms a hobby into something productive.
A lot of the incoming energy in the dahlia community is very millennial energy. Energy to expand social media marketing, energy to expand (paid) class offerings to supplement tuber income, energy to sheet mulch tiny postage squares of backyard or 8 x 10 apartment balconies into dahlia production centers, energy to do everything all at once (and make money doing it). Some of this energy comes from people going through the portal (that’s definitely where mine is coming from) and some of it stems from hating the job you thought you’d love or not finding fulfillment in whatever role you take within your family (e.g., you quit your career to raise kids and are trying to find a way back to a job that makes money and feels good and has some flexibility and is not an MLM).
To be fair, I think a lot of people have taken up or expanded new hobbies as they approach middle age — but the way millennials are doing it is particularly maximalist (10 dahlias one year, 500 the next! Yes I am telling on myself!) and in line with how so many of us have come to think about “sanctioned” ways to do things that aren’t work.
5.) Who Owns a Dahlia?
Earlier this week, a dahlia farm opened with thousands of dahlias on offer — with pictures mostly stolen from other sites. The owners of those sites (who’d spend countless hours on photography) were rightfully outraged (this is far from the first time this has happened — Etsy dahlia sellers are particularly notorious) and a long thread of support emerged for the growers whose work had been lifted.
A few days later, a popular hybridizer (Coseytown) sent an email banning the future sale of all Coseytown tubers, past or future, outside of Coseytown’s own site. In other words: if you bought a Coseytown tuber five years ago or last year or were planning to in this year (in their sale, which opened on March 2nd), then will not be able to sell any of the tubers from your Coseytown plants. You can plant them in your garden, sure — but sell or trade, nope. (Remember, to this point, once you bought a tuber, you were free to do with it what you wanted — including selling its tubers).
As you can imagine, the announcement has caused a massive uproar and still-unfurling conversations. Apart from the fact that the “ban,” at least on previously sold tubers, is utterly unenforceable (you cannot retroactively declare terms of sale, and even moving forward, it will be difficult to impossible to enforce without a patent, which they do not have and are unlikely to obtain), the attempt to control resale has illuminated a very real tension between people who have tremendous respect for the work that hybridizers do….and the established ethos of dahlia-growing, in which the sharing (and selling, and subsequent breeding) of tubers is the norm. (Since the publication of the initial letter, Coseytown has clarified that they will not apply this restriction to dahlias sold prior to 2024 — but again, how do you know??)
I can see how someone on the outside would say: those Coseytown tubers are the same as those photos! Of course they should be able to control who profits from them! I can also see how the current practice — in which hybridizing remains just “part” of one’s business, not the whole, and/or you’re able to dedicate time to hybridizing because you have another source of income — feels off. Dahlia hybridizers are, well, creators — and the maxims we’ve come to understand about compensation for labor within the “creator economy,” broadly conceived, should extend to them. Dahlia fame is nice. But like so many types of contemporary fame, it’s a full-time job that rarely even comes close to paying like it.
The problem, as many in the community have pointed out, is that Coseytown is attempting to reverse the norms of both the plant she’s selling (which proliferates wildly — and Coseytown dahlias have been specifically bred for high tuber yields) and the industry, which helps build demand for new tubers by producing and selling more of them. (If only 100 people can have Coseytowns a year, it’ll stay niche; when ~10,000 can have them, as they do now, you have a known and desirable brand).
Other flower industries (roses, peonies) compensate hybridizers by paying a lot of money for the initial offerings — they’re an investment that they will eventually recoup (and then some) through future sales. Many hybridizers have taken that approach, pricing new offerings between $30 and $50 a tuber. Other companies, like Triple Wren, have implemented “Legacy” programs that allow hybridizers (renowned and amateur) to receive royalties from the sale of their tubers — with the added benefit of spreading and preserving the decades of work by growers like Paul Bloomquist. (Side note: a whole lot of famous growers, including Bloomquist, Triple Wren, and Floret Farms, are within 40 miles of me — our climate is incredibly dahlia-conducive).
Kristine Albrecht, arguably the leading hybridizer in the dahlia world, has also figured out a strategy that works for her farm: when she introduces a new dahlia, like this year’s stunner Cinder Rose, she does it by partnering with just one or two farms. The offerings are priced “high” (a cutting of Cinder Rose went for $45 and sold out within minutes) and a portion of the sales kicks back to Albrecht’s very small urban farm in Santa Cruz — which is exclusively devoted to hybridization. I haven’t seen anyone complain about the price of any of Albrecht’s introductions — everyone knows they’re that good, and if you’re not interested, fine. People aren’t against fair compensation. It just has to make sense.
Dahlias are cranky, particular and gorgeous. They’re highly addictive, in part because they’re so complicated — and so, too, is the community and business infrastructure that has emerged around them. But I’ve found the conversations within that community fascinating in their clarity. How do we put value on things that we love and the labor required to do it? How do we retain what makes something feel great and pure and not-work while also making it sustainable? How do take a hobby both seriously and lightly? I’ve loved thinking through these ideas this past year — and know, as the dahlia wars rage on, that the conversations will proliferate, like so many tubers, hidden but always present.
For this week’s discussion, I’d of course love to hear your thoughts on the intricacies of the dahlia wars (and I’m happy to answer any questions that I can) — but I’d also love to hear about other niches, hobbies, communities, etc. with similar tensions, and how you’ve watched them materialize and crackle and grow.
And if you really want to know more about dahlias:
If you want to follow the very unstructured content and progression over at Lummi Island Dahlias, here you go.
And on a related note: Grass Becomes a Wave is a small farm on Whidbey Island, Washington, farmed by Priscilla Watson. Every season, Priscilla raises funds to keep her beautiful, essential work sustainable. If you have the means, consider joining me in donating to reach her goal (she’s nearly there!)
Her mission: “Grass Becomes a Wave is a farm and studio on Whidbey Island. I grow flowers, vegetables, medicine and dye crops for my botanical dye workshop series. This project is a dedication to my ancestors. I strive to remember, to witness, to honor and to heal my relationship to the land as a Black descendant of farmers.”
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This piece is real evidence of AHP’s greatness as a writer, because I have less than no interest in gardening and the faintest possible level of interest in flowers, yet I read every word with interest.
I love all Culture Study gardening content but the intersection of this topic with other Cultire Study Things like The Portal and Millennial Hustle Culture made it such an extra great read.
Also, this is perhaps a #basic example, but this reminds me a lot of 2010s Serious Food People Culture, in which I totally partook as a Yelp community manager, designer of food curriculum and sometime Brooklyn Kitchen teacher. It wasn’t enough to have a decent chef’s knife and know how to use it; you had to have a hyperspecific blade recommended by Heidi Swanson (though the one she recommended was truly great and I still love it). It wasn’t enough to know the general gist of how the Maillard reaction works; you had to read the collected works of J. Kenji Lopez (a nice guy and truly a total genius, tbh), and know the precise blend of ingredients and techniques to produce the chemically Platonic ideal of a Sunday gravy. And on and on. And obviously it wasn’t enough just to love food and throw dinner parties for your friends — it had to be your job. And so it was for me for a long time, because when I love something I too tend to go wide and deep and obsess and try to know all there is to know and do all there is to do.
But you know what? I like food so much better when it’s not my job. I do other stuff now. It’s nice to let the things we love exist separately from the ways we serve our communities for money. It’s nice to stop at “enough” rather than going full throttle into “doing the most for no reason.”