Did Your Granny Grow Dahlias Too?

We used to hear this all the time.

Someone would walk into our dahlia garden, look around and say:

“Oh! My granny used to grow beautiful dahlias!”

And that was very rarely the end of it.

Suddenly, they remembered where the dahlias grew. What colour they were. How enormous they seemed when they were little. Their grandad's vegetable garden. The old house. Flowers on the kitchen table.

Sometimes one tiny thing would set off a whole chain of memories.

And dahlias seem to be particularly good at it!

So, do you remember dahlias from when you were little?

Did your mum grow them? Your grandmother? Were they lined up neatly in a garden bed, or were they enormous unruly things flopping all over the place?

Did you pick them?

Did you get sent outside to deadhead them?

Were there earwigs hiding in them? Because THAT seems to be a fairly universal dahlia memory. 😂

And do your children or grandchildren know any of this?

That's the bit we've been thinking about lately.

What did Grandma's garden look like?

It's actually quite a hard question to answer out of nowhere.

If someone sat me down and said, “Tell me some interesting stories about your childhood,” I'd probably struggle to think of anything particularly interesting on demand.

But show someone a dahlia and you get:

“Oh! We had those!”

And then you're off.

Where were they growing?

Who planted them?

Did you help?

What else was in the garden?

Did you have a vegetable patch?

What did you eat straight from the garden when nobody was looking?

Did Grandma grow rhubarb?

Did she make you eat it?!

Suddenly we're not really talking about dahlias anymore.

We're talking about her.

And THAT is exactly the idea behind Letters to Grandma Moa.

Enter four extremely nosy little moas...

Poppy, Willow, Sage and Rocket aren't sending Grandma a list of questions about her childhood.

That would be a bit weird.

Instead, they're getting on with their own lives here at Moa Gardens.

Poppy is digging holes and dreaming up enormous plans. Willow is noticing butterflies and tiny things everyone else has missed. Sage is making things and trying to keep everybody organised. Rocket is probably racing a duck somewhere he shouldn't be.

And amongst all of that, things happen that might remind Grandma of something.

Perhaps they're growing something Grandma remembers growing.

Perhaps they're making a recipe she hasn't eaten since she was a child.

Perhaps one of them asks what they should be when they grow up and Grandma suddenly remembers what she wanted to be.

Perhaps they find a caterpillar and she remembers collecting them when she was eight.

And then hopefully comes one of our favourite sentences:

“Do you know, when I was your age...”

Because that's when things get interesting.

So here's a question for you...

What ordinary thing reminds you of your grandparents?

Is it dahlias?

A particular cake?

A smell?

A song?

Tomatoes in a greenhouse?

A biscuit tin full of sewing supplies instead of biscuits? 😂

And more importantly, have you ever told your children about it?

Because those funny little memories that don't seem important enough to tell anyone are often exactly the stories we'd love to hear once it's too late to ask.

That's one of the reasons Milly created Letters to Grandma Moa. The letters are something lovely for Grandma to receive, but they're also full of little conversation starters. Things that might spark a memory, lead to a phone call, get a postcard sent to a grandchild or start a completely unexpected conversation.

You never quite know what will do it.

It might even be a dahlia.

And perhaps, years from now, one of your children will spot one and say:

“Oh! My granny used to grow beautiful dahlias.”

And hopefully they'll know the story that comes next. 🌸

Discover more about Milly's Letters to Grandma Moa here. Discover More