The Lilac Lady: Hulda Klager's work preserved at historic gardens

WOODLAND, Cowlitz County — Hulda Klager was 83 years old in the spring of 1948, when the Columbia and Lewis rivers swelled with heavy rains, rushed past her protests and flooded her prized lilac garden.

She had named and nurtured the shrubs and plants for 45 years.

They all died.

But Klager was a tough woman, who had already overcome her size (she was not quite five feet tall but bore four children), circumstances (she tumbled out West in a covered wagon and married a dairy farmer when she was 16) and expectations (at one time, she had hybridized 64 of the 250 varieties recognized by the International Lilac Society in Ontario, Canada).

Friends, family and strangers brought back rare species she had thought were lost forever. She replanted and relandscaped. Two years later, the garden was replenished. And when she died in 1960, at the age of 96, it was only after she had just finished another day working the river-dredged soil, just as she had done for half a century.

The flood and its aftermath is legend among the ladies of the Hulda Klager Lilac Society. They know the story and love it. And they admired Klager so much that in 1976, they decided to preserve Klager's house and work.

They raised money at pancake feeds, saved the land from developers, persuaded the government to name the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens a national historic site, and reintroduced a tradition that Klager started back in the 1920s: inviting the public to see her lilacs in full bloom.

This year, the Lilac Festival lasts through Sunday, Mother's Day. The grounds are open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. A $2 donation is requested for each visitor. More than 120 varieties of lilacs will be displayed; more than 50 varieties are on sale; and about 20 of the varieties are Klager originals.

"Hulda made miracles, with the scientific work and the money she didn't have available," says Nola Marks, 71, vice president of the Lilac Society's garden committee. "There was no university nearby. She did it all on her own. She was a good German girl, very determined, very persistent."

Today, in Klager's garden, open to the public all year long, the sun shines over neat rows of shrubs and brick walkways and freshly mowed lawns. There are many kinds of faded wooden benches on which to sit and relax. A Union Pacific freight train blares by occasionally — a straight line of box cars at the back edge of the property line. The roar doesn't last long and the clickety-clack fades, replaced again by chirping birds and tinkling wind chimes.

When it's quiet, the clean, fresh, sometimes spicy scent of lilacs expands my ribcage, makes me taller with each full inhale.

Many of the lilacs here have interesting names: Blanche Sweet, Burgundy Queen, Belle de Nancy, Charles X, Prairie Petite, Prophecy, Pink Cloud, Miss Ellen Willmott, Maud Nottcut, Mrs. Edward Harding, President Lincoln, Wilbur, Superba and Leon Gambetta.

Among all the different background shades of green, lilac blooms are bright bursts of pinks and purples, lavenders and whites.

Several taller shrubs are named after her husband, Frank, and their son, Fritz. The gardeners don't like to let the shrubs grow too tall, lest the scent be lost to the wind.

There is one named after Hulda herself, a pinkish-colored lilac with double, or eight, petals. Many others, Klager named after friends or family members or nearby cities. She called her lilacs pets.

"Some people had dogs and cats," says Peggy Stenlund, 81, the Lilac Society's garden supervisor since 1980. "She had lilacs."

The Lilac Society has developed the garden and the grounds — 4.5 acres that includes a windmill, a water tower and the Klager family's original two-story, white, Victorian-era house — as a method of preserving history in Woodland. Even in a little town of 3,600 people, growth and development can be serious problems.

"This place, it's kind of like a time warp, where people can come think, 'I'm a little girl again,' " says Peggy Mars, 62, a past president of the Lilac Society, who now manages the gift shop. "The world is safe because I'm back at my grandma's house."

Klager, who was born in 1863 as Hulda Thiel, didn't start working with plants until she was at least 40 years old.

She was bedridden and sick, and some thoughtful friends brought her a book, "New Creations in Plant Life," by Luther Burbank. From it, she learned how to breed bigger apples so she could bake plumper pies. By crossing a Wolf River, a mild apple, with a Wild Bismark, a sour juicy apple, she got the desired result.

In 1905, she ordered seven distinct lilacs from a distributor in France. According to old newspaper clippings, where she described her work, Klager said she planted them and walked into the garden early in the mornings, when the dew was fresh and the wind was calm.

She gingerly pried open new lilac buds with a crochet hook and gathered the pollen on a paintbrush. She applied the pollen to the pistils of other varieties, experimenting with different colors and fragrances and sizes and numbers of petals. She was always searching for darker and darker shades of purple.

Then she would enclose the entire cluster of flowers with brown paper bags to ensure that bees wouldn't contaminate the experiment.

"At first, of course, I was disappointed when after crossing different strains the resulting plant was no improvement on the old variety," she said in a 1927 issue of American magazine. "But now I know it's all in the game. If I get one in 500 worth saving, I rejoice, but if I don't, over the fence it goes and I try something else."

By 1910, she had 14 new varieties. In 1926, an article written in the Oregonian newspaper commended Klager as "the Woodland housewife" who had "developed more than 60 varieties of lilacs ... the finest collection in the country."

About that time, enough flower fanciers were coming her way that she decided to open her house to the public, when the lilacs were in full bloom.

In 1947, the Oregon State Federation of Garden Clubs gave her an award for developing more than 100 "new and valuable strains of lilac and other horticultural material." She was given a similar award by the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs in 1958.

Her lilacs were planted in the State Capitol grounds in Olympia, and at arboretums in Massachusetts, Illinois and Nebraska.

In Klager's obituary in the Longview Daily News — she had lived 83 years in Woodland — a neighbor, Mrs. Al Fredrickson, said, "Her keen mind remembered in detail the origin and names of all her plants and flowers. Her eyesight was something to be marveled at for she could spot a weed a mile away.

"As I worked with her on several occasions, I marveled at her sense of humor and her determined will to work in her garden from her wheelchair, hoe in hand."

A local garden club and a few in-laws took over the site after Klager died. But a fire gutted the house. Neglect dried out the garden. A developer bought the site to raze for an industrial complex. Sixteen years passed.

The Lilac Society stepped in, swapped land with the developer, raised money to buy the house and won grants to restore the estate — in addition to patiently raising the lilacs.

But the average age of the Lilac Society's members is probably now 70, says the current president, Fran Northcut, 59. There are too many sore muscles and not enough strength to pull the weeds or push the wheelbarrows, Northcut says.

The group's immediate goal is to raise enough money to start a trust or an endowment and pay a gardener to work full-time.

"We've kept it going because there have been so many people who have donated so much time and effort," Northcut says. "But some of the original members are gone, passed away. We need some younger blood. Lilacs are an old-fashioned flower, with an old-fashioned smell, like the perfume your grandmother used to wear."

Michael Ko can be reached at 206-515-5653 or mko@seattletimes.com.