EV Puff N Stuff - Fall

EV Puff-N-Stuff is one of those dahlias that almost seems to blur the line between a traditional dahlia and something completely different.

The outer petals are lavender to soft purple, brushed and streaked with deeper burgundy tones. At the center, the flower becomes much fluffier, building into a dense cushion of deep fuchsia petals with serrated edges that can pick up warmer golden tips as the season progresses.

The result is wonderfully unusual.

Its novelty fully double form gives EV Puff-N-Stuff a layered, almost ruffled appearance. As the bloom opens, the outer petals tend to relax backward while that dramatic center becomes more pronounced, creating a silhouette that almost resembles an anemone or echinacea tucked inside a dahlia.

In our market bouquets, this is exactly the kind of flower I use when I want texture and personality. It works beautifully with lavender, blush, dusty rose, mauve, raspberry, burgundy, plum, and cream, and its unusual shape immediately breaks up a bucket filled with more traditional ball and decorative forms.

For our local florists, EV Puff-N-Stuff offers something especially fun: a flower that already looks designed before it ever reaches the vase. The combination of a softer lavender exterior and saturated fuchsia center gives designers several colors to pull through the rest of an arrangement.

I especially like it for garden-style wedding work. It can bring whimsy into mauve-and-burgundy palettes, add texture to blush and lavender combinations, or become an unexpected focal moment in a looser, more romantic arrangement.

The plants grow to around 3½ feet tall, making them somewhat more compact than many of our taller cutting varieties.

That shorter vase life is something I keep in mind when deciding how to use it. I would favor freshly cut market bouquets, event flowers, and arrangements that will be enjoyed immediately rather than positioning it as a long-vase-life workhorse.

What I appreciate most about EV Puff-N-Stuff is that it is genuinely different. With hundreds of dahlias available, varieties that bring a completely new texture to the cutting bucket are worth paying attention to.

For the gardener who loves lavender, burgundy, fuchsia, and unusual highly textured flowers, EV Puff-N-Stuff is a wonderfully playful variety to grow.

Bloom Color: Lavender / Burgundy / Deep Fuchsia Dark Blend
Bloom Form: Novelty Fully Double
Bloom Size: Over 2 inches; exact average size varies
ADS Classification: 7613
Plant Height: Approximately 3½ feet
Hybridizer: S. Hall, USA
Introduced: 2008
Best For: Cutting gardens, market bouquets, florist work, cottage-style arrangements, weddings & collectors