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Learn more about the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens and Lilac Days at
www.lilacgardens.com
WOODLAND — Carol Keffeler’s 89-year-old mother didn’t feel up to exploring the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens on Sunday afternoon.
“I’ll just bring some flowers to you, then,” Keffeler told her mom.
Keffeler, a retired teacher from Hazel Dell, bought a $5 lilac bouquet at the gardens and took it right back to her car, giving it to her mother, Gladys Smiley of Salmon Creek, who was resting in the passenger seat. Smiley said seeing and smelling the delicate, purple flowers takes her back to when she lived in Danbury, Wis., where the lilacs grew outside her church.
On Sundays when the flowers were in bloom, “you could just smell the lilacs,” Keffeler said. She added that visiting the lilac garden and the nearby Holland America tulip farm has become a yearly ritual for the mother-daughter duo.
Keffeler wasn’t the only visitor treating her mom during this year’s opening weekend of Lilac Days at the gardens.
Salem, Ore., sisters Amy Caulder and Kelly Violette brought their parents, Roger and Wendy Belanger, to the gardens Sunday afternoon. The family stopped and took photos in front of one of the most popular lilac bushes of the day — a dark purple variety called Glory.
The Belangers were visiting from Norridgewock, Maine, and “basically, we’re on the great garden tour,” Caulder said. They previously visited some tulip fields in Woodburn, Ore., and have plans to see the Schreiner’s Iris Gardens in Oregon.
“They know how much I love flowers,” Wendy Belanger said. “It’s just incredible. We’re so happy we came. … Looking at them makes me smile.”
The lilac gardens host Lilac Days each spring for about three weeks. On Saturday and Sunday, an estimated 6,000 visitors flocked to the gardens to see and smell the purple, pink, blue and white lilac varieties. Many also explored the Victorian-era farmhouse of Hulda Klager, a leading lilac hybridizer who owned the property until her death in 1960 at age 96.
This year’s unusually warm winter caused the lilacs to start blooming about 2½ weeks ahead of schedule, gardens volunteer Catherine Trahin said, but there were still plenty of blooms to see. She said visitors are encouraged to spend as much of the day as they want on the grounds; some even bring picnic blankets and a lunch, and lounge on the lawn.
The gardens also sell lilac plants and starts during Lilac Days. Proceeds from those sales cover upkeep of the gardens and the Klager house, Trahin said. Plant sales have picked up this year, Trahin added, citing an improving economy as a possible factor.
Dione Fugere of Troutdale, Ore., and Donna DeSanno of Damascus, Ore., were at the gardens Sunday to purchase their own lilac plants.
“It has such a variety of lilacs — much more than the nurseries do,” DeSanno said.
Fugere added: “Who can resist a beautiful spring lilac in a vase?”
Lilac Days will conclude on Mother’s Day, May 10.
