56 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
DAHLIAS AT WISLEY, 1921. 
For several years past a joint Committee of the R.H.S. Floral Com- 
mittee and the National Dahlia Society has met during the Dahlia 
season to recommend varieties for Awards, and considerable numbers 
of awards have been made on its recommendation. The Council 
has felt, however, that the appearance of the Dahlia flowers at an 
exhibition was not alone a reliable guide to their value for garden 
decoration. In 1920 it therefore arranged, with the acquiescence of 
the National Dahlia Society, that the function of the Joint Committee 
at the London shows should be to select from the varieties placed 
before it those which were thought to be best, and to grow these in 
the following year at Wisley, and there to judge them for their merit 
as garden plants. 
When seen growing not only can the colour and form be taken 
into account, but due weight can be given to the habit of the plant, the 
poise of the flower, the period over which flowers are produced, and 
the number of flowers the variety will produce at a particular time, 
as well as to other varietal characters upon which the value of 
the plant in the garden depends. Too much attention seems to have 
been concentrated upon form, size, and colour, and too little upon 
the production of plants which show off their flowers to the best 
advantage, and produce good flowers without special measures being 
adopted. It is probably in consequence of this that the Dahlia is 
less grown than formerly. Yet, since there are good, in fact very 
good, varieties in existence, which may easily be had in flower by the 
second week in August, and which will give a constant and lavish 
succession of flowers from then until frost cuts them down, with no 
more attention than the tying of the growths and the removal of dead 
flowers to prevent seeding, to omit them from the garden is to neglect 
an opportunity of keeping the garden gay over what is often a dull 
time in the herbaceous border. 
Many object to the stiff appearance of the older types on the one 
hand, and to the heavy, very large, and floppy types on the other, 
but there are intermediates of refined appearance holding themselves 
well which cannot fail to please, and to this type the Committee's 
awards made during the present trial draw particular attention. 
Nurserymen and others felt that confusion had' arisen between 
some of the groups as given in catalogues, and the Council, therefore, 
arranged to grow a comprehensive series of the plants in order that the 
classification might be considered and put upon sound lines, and 
to this end they invited raisers to send a certain number oi their best 
forms of all sections to grow with those selected by the Committee. 
When they were in flower a Conference was called at Wisley, under 
the Chairmanship of Mr. W. Cuthbertson, V.M.H., and the classifi- 
cation was fully discussed, the classes shown in the notes below being 
