Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens in Woodland: Lilac Lady land

That kind of dedication is inspiring, and a little overwhelming, to the 100-plus volunteers who spend hundreds of hours every spring preparing the buildings and grounds of the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens, and thousands more hours welcoming visitors and serving customers during the annual festival of flowers in April and May called Lilac Days.

Lilac Days is a great way to spread some lilac love, said Hulda Klager Lilac Society president Dwight Trahin, but there’s an ulterior motive to all the plant sales and the modest admission markup ($3 the rest of the year, but $5 from April 20 to May 12): The nonprofit wants to build its bank account and eventually hire some paid staff. It would be nice if the senior citizens who make up the bulk of the nonprofit society didn’t always have to do all the manual labor, Trahin said. Joining the society costs a whopping $8, he added.

Not that the volunteers show any sign of slowing.

“We have been volunteering for 20 years,” said Catherine Trahin, Dwight’s wife. “We just love the garden. It’s a beautiful, magical place.”

‘New Creations’

Lilacs may be the stars of this show, but the story begins with apple pie. That’s what Klager was seeking to perfect when she started experimenting here.

She was born Hulda Thiel in Germany and emigrated with her family to Wisconsin at age two and to Woodland at age 13. The family’s functional Victorian farmhouse was built in 1889, and when Hulda married farmer Frank Klager at age 16, he moved to her place.

A farm wife and mother, Hulda Klager was recovering from illness in 1903 when friends gifted her with “New Creations in Plant Life,” a book about renowned American botanist, horticulturalist and hybridizer Luther Burbank. Klager was fascinated, and her first project was making a more practical pie apple.

“(S)he felt it took too long to peel all those little apples,” the society’s website says. “So she set out to develop a bigger apple by crossing the mild Wolf River apple with the sour, juicy Bismarck apple, and was delighted with the result.”

After that test run, Klager turned to lilacs, and became so prolific at developing new hybrids that she started holding an annual open house to share the results. By 1930, she was hosting a “Lilac Week” and receiving official delegations from nearby cities to choose their own blooms as floral emblems — resulting in flower names like “City of Longview,” “City of Kalama,” and “City of Woodland.” Klager collected honors from organizations as grassroots as local garden clubs and as far-flung as the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. The place is now a National Historic Site.

Loving bunches

But her botanical career wasn’t all flowers. It could take up to eight years for any single cross-pollination to show results, and Klager estimated a final success rate of one in 400. When her husband died in 1922, she considered throwing it all away, but son Fritz convinced her not to give up. By the time the tragic 1948 flood hit, Klager had something truly invaluable: legions of fans who had heard about her misfortune and took it upon themselves to send her starts from the plants she’d sold them. Hulda Klager’s blooms came back to her in loving bunches. The gardens came back to life, and Lilac Week recommenced.

But after Klager’s death in 1960, the family couldn’t afford the property anymore, and it was sold. According to Lilac Society vice president Patti Audette, bulldozers were literally lined up and ready to raze the place when the local garden club stepped in to save it. That was managed through a trade; Daisy Button Grotvik traded 7 acres of her own Woodland Bottoms land in exchange for the 4.5-acre Klager property, then deeded her new real estate to the new Hulda Klager Lilac Society.

“A lot of locals thought it would be a travesty to lose this history,” said Audette.

On Monday, visitors to the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens included the Camas-Washougal Garden Club and the Lavender Lemonade Book Club — which was formed one day by some reading friends over lavender-infused vodka tonics, according to club member Peri Muhihc as she toured the farmhouse.

Outside, lavender club member Kathy Geyer was hunting for the right strain of lilac to replace a shrub on her property that died, she said. She hadn’t visited the Hulda Klager Lilac Garden in decades, she added.

“What a lovely, refreshing revisit to a treasure of a garden,” Geyer said. “She must have been a pretty amazing woman.”