2008 Border/Container Dahlia of the Year

by Steve Nowotarski, Photo by Tinnee Lee

The votes are in and the winner is PRINCESS PAIGE BB FD V W/Pr. I first saw this low growing beauty in the Eastern Trial Garden in 2006. At first glance (in mid July) it just appeared as a low growing variegated BB size dahlia with few outstanding qualities. As the season went on it just kept blooming and blooming. By mid to late August the 3 plants were covered with eye catching bright blooms. The blooms were held at a good angle and nice and strong. Into September there were so many blooms one could hardly see the foliage. While it did not score high as an exhibition dahlia it jumped on my list as a possible border dahlia for evaluation by our group of 12. After reviewing it a season in my garden I was sure it fulfilled the requirements to be evaluated as a top Border/Container type dahlia. I grew it in my garden border without any support and in a large container garden. It performed well in both settings. Here are comments from some of the evaluators:

"I had 2 plants of the Princess Paige and both had profuse blooms all season. The quality of the blooms were excellent. The best performer was by far Princess Paige"
Phil Clark Endless
Summer Flower farm

"The best was Princess Paige. It grew well into a 2 foot bushy plant, tolerated dry spells well, bloomed starting in July and now blooming a lot" (September 28)
Peggy Riccio
ED Note: Peggy is a freelance garden writer in the Washington, DC area.

"Princess Paige - started blooming early and kept on blooming."
Claudia Biggs

"It grew very well to a final height of 24". It started blooming about July 20th and has kept blooming well since that time. The form and color of the blooms is very nice and the plant seems healthy and disease free. The blooms are small BB to large miniature in size. Every bloom is evenly variegated and I haven't seen any solid color petals which variegated types frequently have, especially late in the season."
Sandy Bolye

"This was the easiest year of all so far for the evaluation. The Princess Paige dahlia is clearly the best for me of these three. It was more vigorous, had a lot more blooms and even some that I saw exhibited."
Mark Oldenkamp