Where Lilacs Still Bloom (39 page)

For many years, people visited and purchased starts, as they had in Hulda’s later years. These funds and volunteers allowed the garden to be maintained. But with twenty-five thousand visitors a year, finding a way to keep up with the demand for starts gave way to new science and tissue-culturing methods. This new practice allows many more starts to be available for sale each spring to the bus-tour visitors from all over the region and individuals who come from around the world to see this splendid space of grace.

Thousands of hours of volunteer time prepares annual Lilac Days that honor the Lilac Lady of Woodland, as Hulda became known. Blooms begin in mid-April and end around Mother’s Day in May. Today, scouts and teens and retired service groups join the friends of the society and the board and volunteers participating in caring for the garden. The scouts are especially busy on Woodland’s “Make a Difference Day” and are reminiscent of Hulda’s bucket boys hired to water the more than one thousand plants within the garden. Hulda’s home is open for viewing during those first two weeks of the lilac season, and the gift shop offers garden-related items for sale along with lilacs, including bonsai varieties.

Hulda’s amazing ability to develop over two hundred fifty varieties of lilac from crossbreeding her Magical Three of the surviving Lemoine is considered remarkable. Her lilacs are part of collections at Arnold Arboretum at Harvard, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and the Havemeyer estate near New York City, among others. Her connection with Luther Burbank is based on fact. More of Mr. Burbank’s life and his influence on horticulture at the time can be found in an exceptional book by Jane S. Smith,
The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
. Hulda did begin her work with apple hybridizing, moved to daffodils, dahlias, and tulips, and then to lilacs. From the list of variety names, one can speculate about prominent people Hulda corresponded with, such as Will Rogers, as well as
many plants named for people whose stories few know: Alice, Carmine, Cora, among others. Hulda did write her article about dredging and was a regular attendee of the community Bible study led by the Seventh-Day Adventists and faithfully attended the Presbyterian church. The characters of Nelia, Ruth, Shelly, Jasmine, Barney, and Cornelia are all fictitious but meant to invoke the distinctive range of people Hulda touched and whose generosity later helped restore the Klager garden. The Lowthorpe School was a real institution, and Wister did include a number of Klager lilac varieties in his famous book published in 1943. The descriptions of lilac varieties are taken in part from the article “The Hulda Klager Lilacs Reviewed” by Freek Vrugtman, registrar of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton, Canada, published in the summer 1999 issue of
Lilacs
. The review includes the most extensive listing of Hulda’s lilacs on record.

Hulda was an ordinary woman with an extraordinary ability not only to see the details within individual plants so that she could breed for hardiness and resistance to disease in addition to color and size and scent, but also to imagine something more than the tiny pollen at the end of her turkey feather or smallest brush. Her dedication to detail and the specifics of science and her artful imagination are what drove her to develop more and more varieties. I like to think it was a gift she was given that she enhanced through study, determination, patience, and love. That she found comfort through flowers during the great many losses in her life is pure speculation
on my part; but given her generous spirit and how the garden was rebuilt after the flood of 1948, I think it is speculation well founded.

Few records exist from Hulda’s experimental work. Frank did make tags for her, and her grafting knife, hoe, and hat are ephemera that memorialize her life’s work. Even in her lifetime, thousands came “to watch her burn.”

The society still seeks plants that might have as their ancestors a Hulda Klager variety not yet returned to the garden.

If one misses Lilac Days, the gardens are still open for walking and viewing. The garden hosts Washington State’s oldest ginkgo tree, five varieties of magnolia trees, and countless annuals and perennials. Guests are welcome to sit on benches and just breathe in beauty. The fragrance lingers long after Mother’s Day, and the beauty of blooms of all kinds of flowers offer both a story worth remembering and a place of rest for the world where lilacs still bloom.

Like a slow-moving river, this story came to me many years ago through Betty Carlson Mills. Once a Planter’s Day Princess, Betty married Roland Mills, a grandson of Hulda Klager. Throughout her life in Woodland, Washington, Betty worked with family and volunteers to keep the Klager Lilac Gardens flourishing. One day several years ago, Betty sent me an invitation to come to Lilac Days, but I was busy and, not being a gardener, didn’t appreciate what a treasure awaited me. A faithful reader of my other books, Betty expressed hope that this would be a story that would interest me, about a remarkable woman who taught herself horticulture and how her generosity came full circle to touch lives.

More years passed, and Betty occasionally sent me copies of newspaper articles about the garden, from
Sunset
magazine to the
Farm Journal
to the
American Magazine
, the latter a 1927 gem by Ruth Graham Case. Betty provided local histories, and every now and then reminded me of the dates for Lilac Days stretching nearly a month each spring.

Two years ago, with my friend Carol Tedder, I took Betty up on visiting the lilac gardens. There, in the midst of lilacs blooming, I was swept back to the early nineteen hundreds and my own lilac experiences: shrubs planted next to the one-room school gate just a quarter mile from our Wisconsin
farm; lilac windbreaks, that heady scent in spring. There was so much more in Hulda’s garden, and I knew that here was a story of resilience and pleasure that celebrated beauty and generosity, persistence and love. So I thanked Betty immensely for her persistence and belief in the gift of Hulda’s story and for the privilege in being able to share it with others.

Judy Card, board member of the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens, became an indelible part of whatever is good about my version of Hulda’s story. A genealogist and historian, she located resources, drove me to the Cowlitz County Historical Museum, the Longview Public Library, the Kelso courthouse, up bluffs and along the river bottoms, and she and her husband, Stuart, offered hospitality to my husband and me (and our dogs) in their home. Her genealogy listings of descendants kept me straight on who belonged in what family, and her retyping of
Fields of Flowers and Forests of Firs: A History of the Woodland Community 1850–1958
helped me locate important dates and descriptions that I hope lend authenticity to the story about early Woodland life. Judy was always available for questions and shared speculations with me about events. She has become a friend, one of the gifts of sharing stories.

President Patti Audette gathered the board together to give me entrée into this remarkable story and provided important consents for access whenever I requested it. I am grateful. Ruth Wendt, Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens gardener and
board member, answered questions and toured me through the site, sharing works she’d written about the garden and plants, and I’m grateful. Fran Northcut, horticulturist and board member, gave of her time and wisdom and provided me with the detailed accounting of individual Klager lilacs completed by the International Lilac Committee in 1999, a critical resource, and I thank Fran for sharing it. This list provided names of varieties attributed to Hulda’s phenomenal efforts of hybridizing. The varieties listed included those identified in Cooley’s catalog, from arboretums across the country, and more in Wister’s
Lilacs for America
, published in 1943. Any horticultural errors noted by avid gardeners belong to me. Ruth and Fran and the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens members and volunteers gave nothing but the best horticultural insights and Klager history.

Karen Eddy of the house committee of the board graciously answered questions, told stories, and reviewed items in the history room (on more than one occasion). Other board members met with me—Cicely Perry, Juanita MacMahon—to share insights. Joyce Carlson, currently of the Woodland Historical Museum Society but former president of the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens, shared her incredible scrapbook and retrieved other historical tidbits, such as Dr. Alice Chapman’s accident that enhanced the history of early Woodland and the Klager family saga.

I also spoke with or exchanged e-mails with other descendants, such as great-nephew and Woodland City Mayor
Chuck Blum (who as a child lived next-door to Hulda’s garden) and great-granddaughter Carolyn Wing, as well as Joyce Gilbert, Clara’s daughter, who shared lively stories of visiting her grandma Hulda and the dogs, always named Bobby. There were others willing and offering, and so many descendants I didn’t personally meet, but whose stories through the years have become a part of the lore of Hulda Klager’s exceptional life. I’m grateful to them all.

Thanks as well go to my editor Shannon Marchese and all the WaterBrook team who I know prayed for me and my husband during his medical emergencies as this book was being finalized. I thank them and my prayer team, and my own family for their generosity and love.

Finally to Jerry, who researched with me and then began his own journey into healing, I thank you and see in you those Hulda Klager qualities of persistence, generosity, and love. I’ve taken to having fresh flowers on the table as often as possible for their healing presence.

When we moved from our remote ranch, I brought two Hulda Klager lilac plants with me. They bloomed this spring beside an older lilac bush on property recently purchased near Bend, Oregon, that is now our home. The previous owner said that bush had never bloomed. But as I finish this book in 2011, in a year when Jerry works to recover, there are buds ready to burst. It’s a deep purple flower. I think Hulda would approve.

Based on a true story, Hulda Klager’s life reminds us of both strength and generosity as she endured hardships in the midst of unique achievements. It’s my hope that her life will inspire our own lives as we experience challenges and disappointments on our way to present joys.