Eketāhuna success at North Island National Dahlia Show

National dahlia exhibitor Antoinette Lambert stands next to one of her many dahlias

Antoinette Lambert, from Eketāhuna, had some success at the North Island National Dahlia Show held in Hāwera on February 12 and 13.

She has been exhibiting at the national level for the past 25 to 30 years.

Multiple vases were entered in different classes and Antoinette came away with a box full of trophies after four vases were selected for the top table.

She is the only dahlia exhibitor from Eketāhuna and districts, and belongs to the Central Districts Dahlia Society in Palmerston North, where she is the secretary.

Flowers have been a life-long passion for Antoinette, who is keen on gardening and loves begonias, fuchsias and espaliered fruit trees.

"With dahlias, there is a huge variety in form, colour, size and they flower for a very long time," says Antoinette.

"First flowers might be at the end of December, right through to April/May.

"As long as you keep picking the flowers and getting the buds to come on. I'm always trying to encourage people to grow dahlias, as a club member and as an individual.

"There's a huge following of people growing dahlias, now with 9000 members on the national Facebook page. People are encouraged to join a club to get good information and good tubers and to exhibit.

"We always encourage to show, because that means that you are working towards growing the flower to the best of its ability and the best of your ability.

"That promotes the flower and improvement, once you start to get an interest, you might start wanting to breed dahlias, which can be easily done at home.

"That's how the flower progresses. The dahlia started as a little daisy-looking plant, growing in the highlands of Mexico. With hybridisation and selective growing, you turn the flower into what it is now.

"People have to keep an interest in the flower to keep that continuing to happen. Some bred in the '50s and '60s are still going. On the show bench now, some of them don't stand up to the modern cultivars, which have profoundly more petals in them. It can be fashion or a quest for excellence.

"When you're growing for a show, you have to have a bit of patience and dedication. The wind is the biggest issue for dahlias and my garden seems to be a couple of weeks behind everywhere else. I never have flowers ready for the early shows. This season has been particularly hot, which they don't like," she said.

Antoinette is a points trophy winner and champion vase winner from the Woodville Horticultural Show, where she normally enters most classes as well as dahlias. There was no show this year because of Covid. Normally, she will show at Lower Hutt, Napier and Feilding and around the local area.

"Packing them for transport is one of the trickiest things, to avoid bruising of the petals and snapping of large stems," she says. "But it's a fun sort of thing to do. You can put as much time and effort into it as you want to.

"Garden growers need to know, with just a little bit of effort, they can turn their 'okay' flowers into something special.

"If they only grow garden varieties, they'll never get the blooms an exhibitor will get. That's why it's important to join a club and meet the exhibitors, even if you don't want to show your flowers. You can grow better quality flowers by using the correct tubers," she said.