I have been an admirer of LeeAnn Huber at Coseytown Flowers for a long time - She is a dahlia breeder who lives in Pennsylvania, close enough to our farm here in Adamstown that our growing conditions are very similar. She is business savvy, had a great eye for color, and the varieties she is breeding to bring to market are desirable to me as a cut flower grower because she focuses on good tuber producers, strong and long stems (good bloom to stem attachment) and blooms with a long vase life. She is also very virus conscientious - there are lots of yucky viruses that spread in dahlias via cuttings and pests, and LeeAnn offers education both on Instagram and via her online classroom and is very careful about what she sends out into the world.

Her tuber sales each winter sell out in minutes, which is awesome for her (a bummer for me as I missed out on a couple of varieties I would LOVE to grow - here’s hoping for this year’s sale!) which shows you how coveted her Coseytown line of dahlias is. Longwood Gardens has been growing some of her varieties for a couple of years now (this is a big deal!) Have I ever talked about what a gem Longwood is? If you’ve never been, it’s close enough from our area here in Frederick for a day trip and SO worth it (an overnight stay would also be worth it - I can’t recommend The Inn at Whitewing Farm enough, the food scene in Kennett Square is amazing and if you are a flower / plant lover, stop by WorKS on the weekend to shop at Mara Tyler from The Farm at Oxford too!) There is not a bad time of year to visit Longwood because they have a giant conservatory that is full of interesting species that would brighten even the dreariest winter day (hello, orchids!) Their holiday displays are creative and unique and quite simply, stunning. They grow blue poppies in the winter! I could go on and on - But just promise me, you’ll put it on your must see list!

Anyway I digress. In 2022 I got my hands on 5 Coseytown Gale dahlia tubers which I quickly fell in love with. They were generous with both flower stems during the season, and tuber production. This year I grew about 40 plants which in the height of dahlia season were PUMPING blooms out; most weeks I sold out of them in wholesale. They are a lovely blender color (a lot of LeeAnn’s dahlias are) which I find photograph really nicely…

Last year at the end of the season I won LeeAnn’s hashtag contest - I posted a picture of Coseytown Gale during the growing season with the hashtag #coseytowndahlias and after frost she picked my name out of a hat to win 5 tubers from her private collection. She sent me an interesting mix of tubers including Aubergine which quickly jumped to the top of my fave list this season - An anemone form in such a lovely purple color - so special and different, and prolific! She also shared Orange Globe which was not orange until this last week when the weather turned colder - It is the largest ball shaped dahlia I’ve ever seen - A very interesting and special bloom. Thank you for the gifted tubers, LeeAnn - I would never have picked these out for myself and am so glad I got to grow them out / add them to my crop plan for the future!!!

LeeAnn was so nice to invite me out to her farm this past September when it was flush in flowers, and so my sidekick and I took a rare field trip in our busy season to go visit Coseytown. LeeAnn has two distinct separate fields - one is all seedlings - I turned into a fly trap walking in that field because my mouth was open the entire time seeing all of the future possibilities - colors and textures and plant habit…and hearing about culling which is a huge part of what LeeAnn does. Some were in their second year of “watching” and some were brand new and blooming for the first time every day. What an adventure to get to walk those fields daily and observe! One of my favorite thing about farming is trying new varieties every year (only a couple at a time) so to start 100’s of dahlias from seed every year and not know what you are going to get is a total dream! She let’s the bees do all of the pollinating work and they are doing a great job ;)

The other field is focused on tuber production for recent and upcoming product launches. I am also a sucker for seeing long rows of a variety en masse, so it was a real treat to walk those rows, and to see some upcoming Coseytown intros, talk names and say a little prayer that I’m lucky enough to get my hands on some of these beauties in the future (I’m looking at you, 24 Karat!)

One other interesting thing about walking LeeAnn’s fields was the lack of deadheading. I focus a lot on keeping spent blooms cut back from my plants to encourage new blooms, while one of her goals is dahlia seed production, so all of those spent blooms will be collected before frost to save seed for sale and growing on for future Coseytown varieties. Very cool to see all of this in action!

While we ended up talking more than photographing, I was able to snap some photos of a couple of varieties she is keeping an eye on, and some tried and true blooms that were stunning in her field and am excited to share them with you here!

I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but I have been dreaming about this bloom weekly since I saw it literally GLOWING in the Coseytown field.

Coseytown Sugar Berry

LeeAnn’s dahlia fields at Coseytown Flowers are a total dream

Coseytown dahlia seedling - I don’t think I’ve ever seen 5 bees on one bloom!

I would love to hear from you if you are saving seed (not just from dahlias!) as I am just starting to dip my toe into this fun and rewarding part of growing. Hope you are enjoying this mild and mostly lovely fall, and I look forward to writing more in my “off season” - If there are things you’d like to hear about, please let me know, I truly love hearing from you!