A Passion for Dahlias!!

GARDEN MAVEN: Michelle Merizzi / Meaford, Ontario / Zone 5B

We are delighted to introduce Michelle Merizzi of Meaford as our next Green Love Garden Maven — an enthusiastic, warm and welcoming gardener.

Before the highly anticipated garden tour, we sat in Michelle's beautiful expansive garden, surrounded by every plant imagineable, and talked gardening, war stories from our past lives (turns out we both spent time around the Toronto commercial production scene), and we played, "Do you know....". Within half an hour she felt like my newest gardening buddy. One can never have too many.

Michelle is most certainly a Garden Maven. One for whom a large garden is not work, but a creative outlet, a physical outlet, a place to unwind through movement, a very rewarding place - a garden that includes no less than 200 varieties of dahlias.

"This is Carmen Fiesta." Michelle informs, turning the beautiful speckled pink and yellow bloom towards you so that you are better able to appreciate it. This process repeats itself so many times, that you begin to wonder if she hasn't memorized the name of every single Dahlia variety in her collection.

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  Lakeview Premier

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  Carmen Fiesta

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  Klara Zak

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  Skipley Spot of Gold

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  Penny Lane

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  Alana Clair Obscur

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  Penny Lane

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  Night Silence

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  KA Cinder Rose

HOVER TO SEE DAHLIA VARIETAL NAME

While the dahlias are undoubtedly the stars of the late-summer show, it quickly became apparent that this is much more than a Dahlia Collection.

The magic of Michelle's one and a half acre property is that, despite its size, it feels wonderfully personal and lived-in. Mature trees frame densely planted perennial beds. The shade garden tucked behind the main centre garden on the shady side has nearly as many hostas and hellebores as there are dahlias elsewhere. The same can be said for Daylilies, most of whom she has delightedly discovered at Artemesia Daylilies whom I recently also visited and did a feature on. Echinacea, hydrangeas, crocosmia, daisies, liatris and other familiar garden plants mingle with the dahlias.

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Tucked off to one side is a vegetable garden, a small shed holds Michelle's 'just in case' pot collection - the one we all have - and beside the pond, whimsical handmade birdhouses delight. Even Buddy, the resident top frog seems quite content with the arrangement.

Why wouldn't he be? When Michelle goes on her morning 'kill tour' to collect earwigs from her dahlia traps and slugs from her hostas, she returns to the pond and feeds the slugs to the 5 or more frogs who are by now trained to wait for Michelle to arrive. Buddy however, spends the day and keeps Michelle company from his sunning rock while she goes about knocking items off of her daily to do list.

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But about those dahlias...

Soft apricots and corals, deep burgundy, brilliant reds and extraordinary purples. Some are perfectly formed and symmetrical, others wildly shaggy. There are flowers almost as big as dinner plates alongside smaller, intricate blooms.

Walking among more than 200 varieties makes you appreciate just how extraordinarily diverse a single genus can be.

What makes a Garden Maven isn't simply a beautiful garden. It is the gardener behind it.

Michelle is genuinely delighted to share what she knows. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and there is a wonderful sense of curiosity and experimentation here — along with the obvious pleasure she gets from growing something beautiful and sharing it with other gardeners.

Thank you for allowing us to visit, Michelle.

Fellow dahlia lovers take note:

Every Saturday, Michelle prepares big blousy (her words) arrangements collected from her garden available at the Creemore Market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. We hope Michelle will invite us back this fall to share some of her knowledge about lifting and dividing dahlias. Michelle sells dahlia tubers in the Spring, offering the opportunity to grow some of her favourites in your own garden. The next Dahlia Tuber sale date is February 15th, 2027.

You can find Michelle on Instagram here to stay informed when Tubers go on sale next Spring.