Every flower season seems to bring something that takes me by surprise, and this spring it has been our Garden Ranunculus.
We planted them because I wanted to explore a different side of ranunculus, not only the beautiful varieties we grow specifically for cutting, but ranunculus that could become part of the garden itself. I imagined generous little plants covered in flowers, planted along the front of a flower bed or filling pots on the stoep, where you could enjoy them every time you walked past.
Now they are flowering on the farm, and I have to admit that they have become a bit of an obsession.
Every few days another color opens. Just when I think I have found my favourite, something completely different starts flowering a few plants further down the row. There are soft creams and blushes, beautiful pinks and purples, warm yellows and oranges and some wonderfully bright colours that seem to glow in our Northern Cape sunshine.
Naturally, I couldn't just leave them alone.
From a field of flowers to a color idea
One of my favourite parts of growing flowers is seeing colors together in real life. A catalogue can show you a photograph and a colour description, but it is completely different when the flowers are growing next to one another in the field.
You suddenly notice that one particular pink looks beautiful beside a cream, or that an orange becomes completely different when you put a lemon yellow next to it. Sometimes the combinations you think will work don't quite have the magic you expected, while two colours you would never have chosen together turn out to be absolutely gorgeous.
So, as the Garden Ranunculus started flowering, I began picking a few.
Then a few more.
Before long, flowers were being moved around, compared and photographed, and what started as a growing trial became something much more exciting.
I started creating colour recipes.
And that is how Tooty Fruity began
The idea behind our new Tooty Fruity Garden Ranunculus Collection is actually very simple. Instead of selling one big random mixture of colours, I want to create carefully considered mixes that give you a particular colour story in your garden.
I want you to be able to look at a mix and imagine exactly where you would plant it.
Perhaps you love the softer side of the garden, where creams, blushes and gentle tones tumble together in a pot. Perhaps your garden needs something much brighter — hot pinks, yellows and oranges that announce spring from the other side of the lawn.
That is the fun of Tooty Fruity. Each mix has its own personality.
And because I apparently can't simply call anything "pink mix" or "orange mix", they needed names too.
Our first combinations include Pina Colada, Mango Tango, Tropical Punch and Berry Bliss, with more possibilities currently flowering and being tested on the farm.
You can already have a little peek at our developing Tooty Fruity Ranunculus Collection here:
https://lovedahlias.com/collections/tooty-fruity-ranunculus
Growing them before choosing them
There is another reason I am particularly excited about this collection.
I don't want to create these colour combinations from photographs on a computer. I want to grow the flowers first and see them with my own eyes.
That means watching how the colours actually look in our South African light, picking flowers and placing them beside one another, photographing combinations and sometimes changing my mind completely.
It is a slower way of doing things, but flowers have taught me many times that the best things usually are.
What looks like the perfect combination on paper can be completely different once it is flowering in front of you. A color may be warmer than expected, another may have an undertone that only becomes obvious beside something else, and occasionally a flower opens that changes the whole direction of a mix.
So the combinations you eventually see in the collection will have been grown, seen and played with right here at Love Dahlias.
Ranunculus made for the garden
What makes these ranunculus especially exciting to me is the way they grow.
Many of us have fallen in love with ranunculus because of their extraordinary flowers. Layer upon layer of petals creates those full, almost rose-like blooms that make them such wonderful cut flowers.
Our Garden Ranunculus give us another way to enjoy them.
They grow into compact, bushy plants that can produce an abundance of beautiful double flowers, which makes them particularly lovely for garden beds, borders and containers. Instead of thinking only about growing a straight row of ranunculus for cutting, you can start imagining them as part of the actual garden design.
I can already picture a big pot filled with one of the softer Tooty Fruity combinations near a front door, or a bright tropical mix planted along the edge of a bed where the colours can mingle together.
Of course, calling them Garden Ranunculus does not mean the flowers are required to stay outside.
I certainly won't be showing that kind of restraint.
You can still pick a few stems and bring them indoors for a little bud vase or posy. For me, that is part of their charm and you get a beautiful flowering plant in the garden and can occasionally steal a few blooms for the kitchen table.
The road to December
At the moment, this collection is still unfolding in the field.
There are flowers that haven't opened yet, combinations I still want to try and colors that may completely change my mind about what belongs together. Over the coming weeks, I'll continue photographing the flowers and sharing some of the mixes we're experimenting with.
Some of those early ideas will become part of the final Tooty Fruity collection, while others may be changed or replaced as more colors flower.
And that is exactly why I wanted to share the story now rather than waiting until everything was finished.
So often we only show you a flower once it has a name, a photograph and a place in the online shop. This time, I thought it would be much more fun to let you see a little of what happens before that, the growing, the experimenting and the inevitable changing of minds.
Our new Garden Ranunculus mixes are planned for release in December 2026, and by then I hope we will have created a collection of color combinations that are just as beautiful growing together in your garden as they have been here on the farm.
Until then, you can follow along as the flowers open and the collection takes shape.
Have a look at the developing Tooty Fruity Garden Ranunculus Collection here:
https://lovedahlias.com/collections/tooty-fruity-ranunculus
I can't wait to see which one becomes your favourite.
She who loves dahlias — and apparently can't resist ranunculus either,
Mareli