It is time to be dazzled by the Dazzling Dahlia Festival on the campus of The Bascom at 323 Franklin Road in Highlands held this year on September 10–12.
This celebration of botanical design and visual art is a weekend of public events including a reception, floral installations, a juried single bloom competition, studio pottery offerings, hands‑on workshops, and educational presentations.
In advance of the festival, The Bascom will present an educational talk on Saturday, August 29, at 11:00 A.M. by Dahlia Festival Directors Peggy Boruchow Arnette, Libby Eustis, and Kim Daugherty which will clarify what makes a bloom competition ready. The festival kicks off on Thursday, September 10, with an opening reception at 5:00 P.M. Visitors will enjoy light bites and preview the weekend’s floral events.
The festival’s signature event, the single bloom competition, begins on Friday, September 11, from 3:30 until 5:00 P.M., and again on Saturday, September 12, from 10:00 A.M. until 4:00 P.M. Dahlia growers of all ages enter their carefully cultivated single blooms.
A festival highlight will be the Dahlia Dialogue on Saturday presented by Sonya Carpenter, who considers the garden from the perspectives of the other species who share it. Her presentation will explore how the bright, showy forms of dahlias are perceived by wildlife and asks whether those qualities draw pollinators, birds, and other creatures into the landscape – and what gardeners can do to keep them there. Drawing on her background in ecology, Carpenter examines how color attracts pollinators and how thoughtful planting choices can create greater abundance, food, and shelter for the full community of life on the Highlands Plateau.
Sonya is a passionate advocate for the natural world. She and her husband Canty Worley co‑own Co‑Habitate, a Highlands‑based landscape company dedicated to creating and maintaining gardens in balance with nature. She studied ecology at the University of Florida and has applied that foundation to the design of planned natural communities, including pollinator gardens. She served nine years as Director of the Highlands Biological Foundation and currently assists HBF with its north campus improvement project at the Highlands Biological Station. She is also President of the Highlands Plateau Greenway and the local coordinator for Bee City USA, an initiative focused on expanding knowledge of and habitat for native pollinator species.
Thanks to the generosity of festival sponsors, there is no entry fee this year.
All events are free and open to the public, however; the workshops may have associated fees and limited capacity. For more information, visit thebascom.org or follow @TheBascom on social media.
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