Decorative dahlia 'Melody Allegro': description (photo)

The ornamental dahlia Melody Allegro is a masterpiece of selection for lovers of beautiful flowers and park and garden art. The variety's description and characteristics highlight the stunning range of shades that the large flowers, reaching up to 12 cm in diameter, can shimmer with.

With skillful and professional care, the Melody Allegro dahlia will delight flora lovers with shades of salmon, pale lilac, pinkish-orange, and soft orange. This selection belongs to the low-growing dahlia varieties, specifically grown for borders, flowerbeds, and balconies. Despite their relatively recent introduction, these beautiful plants have gained widespread recognition among gardeners and those who appreciate beautiful floral design.

Planted in the ground in late spring or early summer, the decorative dahlia Melody Allegro can delight its gardener by mid-July. Its compact, low-growing bush is covered with 25 flowers, each typically 7-9 cm in diameter, but with proper and meticulous care, can reach 12 cm. The simple description of "bicolor" in the variety's description and characteristics simply fails to convey the full beauty of this compact flowering bush, which can delight the eye from mid-summer until late autumn.

Music series and its advantages

The increasingly popular Melody series of dahlias, a musical selection of selective successes, is conceived and designed as a collection of relatively short, compact varieties. They bloom for a long period, creating a beautiful park, garden, or simply a decorative cottage setting. The variety of species and shades offered by this renowned series can satisfy the most discerning taste and enliven any dull landscape.

Due to the plant's compact size, it can be used in any flowerbeds, rockeries, alpine gardens, Japanese rock gardens, or simply as a border fence in public places.

Planting the Melody Allegro dahlia, on its own, solves most of the decorative problems, but can be refined and supplemented with other representatives of the musical series, which includes the following varieties:

1. Dahlia Melody Harmony, in whose bushy habit true connoisseurs see a closeness to perfection, successfully emphasized by a dense cap of petals of soft pink combined with white diton.
2. The border dahlia Melody Dixie can decorate a flowerbed even with its lush greenery, but it is especially attractive when strewn with white-purple flowers with tightly seated petals.
3. Melody Dora is a tricolor dahlia with very large flowers up to 12 cm across, combining salmon shades and rich purples with a contrasting yellow. Its undeniable advantage is its strong and durable stem, making it suitable for both container and border cultivation.
4. Melody Bolero resembles a bright red ball, with a shimmering palette of vibrant shades. If you use the early forcing method, you can have large potted flowers in your garden or balcony by the middle of the planting.
5. Melody Gypsy, compared to a starfish due to its unique color scheme, features a smooth transition from lemon-yellow at the center of the flower to pinkish and coral at the tips of its petals. Its medium height (55 cm) and striking color combination make this variety a favorite in pots and planters, flowerbeds, borders, and raised beds.
6. Melody Latin is a unique, dominant shade of yellow that catches the eye from afar and looks beautiful when planted alone with the dark green foliage of its own bush, or against more intimate backdrops. Its intense hue truly deserves its name, evoking the festive and passionate music of Latin America.
7. Melody Mambo blooms until late autumn, delighting any flower lover with its smooth transition from the deep burgundy color at the center of its large blooms to the delicate crimson at the tips of its petals. In a pot or planter, it requires ample watering, but in fertile soil, it's extremely easy to grow and requires little attention.
8. Melody Swing is a riot of salmon-colored hues, so unique it truly evokes the image of a professional jazz musician. Whether alone or in a plant arrangement, this variety looks exceptionally striking thanks to its unique tonal shifts and large, 12-centimeter-long blooms.

All varieties of the series enjoy deserved popularity and are almost always in demand on sale.

Melody Allegro, as an ornamental dahlia, enjoys well-deserved popularity for good reason. The manufacturer's stated characteristics fully meet the gardener's expectations and look especially striking in early autumn, even in any autumn landscape.

Melody Allegro variety, its advantages and some disadvantages

A closer look at each characteristic of the Melody Allegro dahlia variety explains why it has become so popular and is the best-selling member of the renowned Melody series. This variety always lives up to its growers' expectations with its large number of blooms per bush and a wide range of shades. Even if grown by an amateur who hasn't yet mastered all the ingredients for success and the flowers are small, their abundance and beauty will still delight even the most discerning gardener.

The compact design and pastel tones of the Melody Harmony dahlia are lost against the densely packed, coral-toned blooms of the Allegro bush. The unique color scheme is what makes this cultivar from the renowned series so popular.

Its undeniable advantages include:

• compactness and direction of the bush;
• large, carved leaves of a rich dark green or bottle green color, creating a beautiful background for flowers;
• basket-shaped inflorescences with a unique pearl-salmon-yellow color scheme, which with standard care grow to 7-9 cm, and with optimal care reach 12 cm;
• ability to grow in almost any place except low or swampy areas;
• Can be grown in a pot, planter, any decorative container, as a border or element of a flower bed;
• looks great in a bouquet;
• ease of care;
• propagation by cuttings, forcing in greenhouse conditions, dividing the tuber and even grafting the bush;
• relative resistance to temperature decrease;
• beauty and aesthetics.

The creators of this beautiful dahlia variety associated Melody Allegro with classical music due to its unique and dominant color combination.

Care features and optimal conditions

Despite the abundance of well-known varieties, dahlias are resilient in their demands on growers. They require fertile soil for planting, although they also thrive in properly fertilized sandy soil. The basic requirements for healthy growth are:

• regular and high-quality watering;
• applying fertilizers at least 2-3 times per season;
• a ventilated area where illumination is present for at least 6 hours per day;
• digging up tubers for the winter and replanting in the spring;
• adding hydrogel to the soil if the plantings are located in a place that is not watered daily.

Reviews from gardeners who have been growing dahlias for a long time indicate that, with minimal attention, the flower can bloom for a long time and looks great in any design.

Famous border varieties like the Melody, Gallery, Topmix, and Impression series have a significant drawback: they are bred through selective breeding and can lose flower size or color intensity with repeated propagation. To avoid this, the dug-up tubers are nurtured in a greenhouse or on a windowsill before spring planting, and the soil in the planting area is dug twice: in late autumn and again in spring, immediately before planting.

Melody Allegro can reach a height of 80-100 cm, and garter is simply necessary for this variety.

Beautiful and diverse

This wild plant, once brought from Latin America, has earned the love and affection of gardeners not only for its diversity. This family of garden plants includes double flowers that can reach up to 25 cm in diameter. Their colors are varied and unique, and the petals can be either flat against the flower head or extend outward, taking the shape of a ball or miniature plate. The variable height of the bush (from 35 cm to 160 cm) allows them to be used in any capacity, for group and single plantings, decorative purposes, landscape compositions, and flower beds. Specially bred plants with sturdy stems are used for cut flowers and bouquets.

Growing border dahlias isn't just a way to pass the time or achieve commercial results. It's an opportunity to gain aesthetic satisfaction, create a beautiful color scheme for a park or garden, and delight others with color combinations.