![]() Thank you, Old House Gardens, for finding and preserving the beautiful ‘Mrs. “Next spring, I’m going to plant another one at the little white house on the hill in memory of my mamaw and papaw, Goldie and Roma Graham. What a reward! I know Mamaw and Papaw are smiling down from heaven. A couple of weeks ago I went out to the garden and there it was, Papaw’s Lavender Dahlia. “This past spring I saw two dahlias at your website that I thought maybe, just maybe were it, so I purchased them both. I bought several that looked right, but when they bloomed they were never the one. Then I started looking everywhere I could think of, hoping to find the lavender dahlia. That summer I spent a lot of time at the little white house on the hill, remembering how much fun we had visiting there when I was a kid. “A few years later my mamaw passed away at 93. Then one year the dahlia didn’t come back. Over the years, though, most all were lost except for the lavender dahlia and two old peonies and a little iris that just kept multiplying. After he died in 1980 I tried to keep his flowers growing for my mamaw. “My papaw kept a beautiful yard, and I inherited the flower gene from him. We never knew its name but we always loved to see it bloom. Every summer it would reward us with the most beautiful lavender blooms. I’m 52 and I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. “This dahlia grew at my mamaw and papaw’s house in Heiskell, Tennessee, coming back for them for 30 or 40 years, even through some hard winters. But in late summer we got a happy surprise: Tens of thousands of dahlias have been introduced, many look a lot alike, and very few have been preserved. I hoped so, too, but I knew that was a very long shot. De ver Warner’ is the dahlia that my papaw and mamaw grew for many years,” Roger Flatford wrote us when he ordered last spring. Rediscovering Papaw’s Hardy Lavender Dahlia So email us one of your favorite garden memories, be that of a person, plant, place, tool, ornament, technique, or simply one magic moment, and we’ll do our best to publish as many stories as space allows right here in future issues of the Gazette. We’d like to record and pass on some of the history and heritage in the backyards of America, the gardens of everyday people. In case you haven’t noticed, here at Old House Gardens we treasure our gardening heritage, and for us that includes a lot more than 400-year-old tulips and famous gardens like Longwood. Who got you started gardening? Do you remember your first radishes, or dahlias? And is there a garden in your past that still calls to you with special power? Well, tell us about it! Will You Share Your Garden Memories With Us? To subscribe to our FREE email newsletter, click here. For other topics, please see our main Newsletter Archives page. ![]() Here’s a collection of our customers’ GARDEN MEMORIES from our email Gazette and past catalogs, starting with the most recently published. ![]()
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