In the middle of May my new border was still a building site, so the minute the cement mixer was removed and I could dig up the hard core from what had previously been a paved area, I did everything I could to improve the bed – adding compost, topsoil from elsewhere and GroChar – before planting. It seems to have worked, one of the dahlias is 6ft 3 inches, another has a flower that measures 10 inches across and even the cosmos (grown from seed) are a lofty 5ft. I’m sure this year’s growing conditions have helped, but none of the dahlias in the other borders anywhere near as big.