By the third week of August the dahlias come into the shop in buckets so full of colour they look almost unreal. Deep plum, hot coral, a pink that shades into apricot at the petal edge. I cut a stem and the hollow snaps cleanly, sap beading at the break, and I know we have hit the part of the year I wait for. As a florist Epsom and the wider Surrey area send to all year round, I can tell you this is the fortnight to order, because the dahlia is at its absolute British-grown peak and there is nothing else in the calendar quite like it.
People assume the best flowers arrive in spring. Tulips, the first scented narcissi, all that bright relief after a grey winter. Spring is lovely. August is better, and most people never find out.
Why August Dahlias Are Different
A dahlia in August is not the same flower you might see in a mixed bunch in May, flown in from a heated glasshouse somewhere warm. The dahlias I am working with right now were lifted as tubers and planted out in British soil in spring, and they have spent the whole summer building up to this. The colour range is the widest it gets all year. I counted seven distinct varieties in the cooler this morning, from the tight pompon types no bigger than a golf ball to the dinner-plate dahlias that open as broad as my outstretched hand.
That long, slow season in real ground is what you are paying for, and it shows. British grown dahlias arrive with their stems firm and their petals dense, not tired from a long-haul flight. When a flower has travelled four miles rather than four thousand, you get every day of its vase life on your kitchen table instead of losing half of it in transit.
There is a softness to a dahlia too, a generosity in the way the petals layer, that suits an August table. It does not try too hard. It just sits there being beautiful while you get on with the bank holiday.
The August Bank Holiday Weekend
The late August bank holiday falls on Monday 31 August this year, and it is the last big gathering moment of the summer before the schools go back and the evenings start drawing in. People have friends round. They eat outside while they still can. Somebody is hosting, and somebody else wants to arrive at the door with something better than a bottle and a bag of crisps.
This is where late summer flowers in Surrey earn their place. A hand-tied bunch of dahlias and dahlia-friendly companions, cosmos, a few stems of scented stock, some trailing amaranthus, makes a host's table feel finished in a way nothing else does. I always tell people to order their August bank holiday flowers for Surrey a couple of days ahead if they can, because the Friday and Saturday before the Monday are the busiest delivery days of our late summer. We hold a fair amount back for next-day requests, but the earlier you tell me, the more choice you get over colour.
If you are sending rather than carrying, flower gifts in Epsom for that weekend tend to be the warm, abundant sort. Nobody wants something stiff and formal in August. They want the bunch that looks like it came straight out of a cottage garden, slightly tumbling, full of life.
If you'd like to steer me by colour, I'll use it well. Late August dahlias come in warm and cool ranges: coral into apricot and deep wine red for a house that runs to earthy tones, soft white and pale café-au-lait for something more understated. Either reads as properly August, and I'll build around whatever is strongest in the buckets that week. That's rarely a compromise. A bunch made from what's genuinely at its best on the day tends to beat one built to match a mood board.
Flowers That Still Look Good Ten Days Later
Here is the practical bit, the thing I get asked most. Will they last?
A well-conditioned August dahlia, cut at the right stage and kept out of direct sun, will give you a genuinely good week, and the buds that come on behind the open blooms will carry the arrangement past ten days if you are tending it. The trick is the water. Dahlias drink hard. I change the water every two days in the shop and recut the stems by a centimetre each time, and you should do the same at home. A hollow-stemmed flower like this will sulk in cloudy water faster than almost anything else I handle.
For the longest-lasting August bunch, I pair dahlias with things that hold up beside them. Eryngium, the steely sea holly, lasts for ages and gives the bunch structure. Hydrangea heads, conditioned properly, sit happily for a fortnight and dry beautifully if you let them. Add a few late September-flowering stems coming through early and you have an arrangement that quietly shifts character as the days pass rather than collapsing all at once. You can see the kind of seasonal hand-tied bunches I mean over on our shop page, where the August selection changes with whatever is at its best that week.
What I would steer you away from in the heat is anything too soft and thirsty on its own. A bunch of nothing but open roses in late August will not thank you. Dahlias give you the colour and the romance with far more staying power.
Why Late Summer Is the Best Time for a Next-Day Bouquet
There is a quiet reason I love this season for delivery, and it is about distance. In August the flowers are local, the season is at its height, and a next-day bouquet across Epsom, Ewell, Ashtead and Banstead is at its freshest because the trip from grower to your door is so short. We are not waiting on imports or fighting the weather. The dahlias, the cosmos, the scented sweet peas hanging on into early August all come from close by, conditioned overnight in our cool room and out for delivery the next morning.
This is the fortnight I live for, and it is precisely because the flowers do most of the talking. I do very little to them. I cut, I condition, I tie, and let that extraordinary colour carry the bunch.
So if there is someone you have been meaning to send something to, or a table you want to fill before the bank holiday, this is the moment. The dahlias will not be this good again until next August. They flower their hearts out, and then one cold morning in October the first frost takes them, blackening the foliage overnight, and that is that. A whole year's wait begins again.
Catch them now, while the buckets are full and the colour is almost too much to believe.