Blooming Beauty

During the warm days of September, the earth on the family-owned Gitts farm burns with color. Bands of yellows and red, pinks, purples, and oranges spread across 43 acres near the banks of the Willamette River. The dahlias of Swan Island are in bloom.

For Nicholas Gitts and his brother Ted, who manage the operation, blooming season is the reward for months of working and waiting. It’s also the busiest time for the nation’s largest dahlia farm.

More than 30,000 people flock to the farm in Canby, Ore., (pop. 12,790) on weekends during the dahlia festival in August and September. Visitors buy about 10,000 cut dahlias a day and another 600,000 dahlia starts, called tubers, are shipped to wholesale and retail markets worldwide.

While other farms experience seasonal lulls, dahlia growing is a year-round job. After the dahlia plants are shipped in April, the tubers, which are a cluster of stems from which the new plants grow, are planted on the farm. It takes a couple of weeks to get them all in the ground. “It’s kind of a rat race all year round,” says Nicholas Gitts, 51. “You don’t really have any down time.”

And when the blooms appear in August, so does the public. People come to escape from the city and walk among the rows, bedazzled by dahlias.

“The flowers are the happy part of it. I think people want that. You can go down to the garden everyday and see something new,” says Gitts, from his farmhouse office 20 feet from the flower fields. He wears dusty jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, and is as comfortable working with plants as he is managing payroll.

But dahlias weren’t always his destiny. Gitts was 11 and unhappy about leaving his friends, when his family moved from Washington to take over the farm in 1963. Later, he left Canby for college and a degree in accounting. After graduation, his father wooed him back to the farm. Now his wife works alongside him in the office, and four years ago Nicholas’s daughter Jennifer Eubanks, 28, gave up a career as a cosmetologist to cultivate the dahlia business.

“I pulled weeds out here when I was 9, 10, and 11 years old,” Eubanks says. “I missed being out here and I missed the seasonal changes. It’s different everyday. I like being outside and the blooming time. There’s nothing like blooming time—it’s amazing.”

During those months, Eubanks can be found bobbing among the rows of dahlias, along with her sister and cousins, cutting fresh flowers to sell. There are more than 325 dahlia varieties at Swan Island. About 10 new flowers are introduced each year.

But it takes a laborious four-year hybridization process before new dahlias make it to market. Nick Gitts, 81, the family patriarch, has been retired for years but still has a hand in hybridization.

New dahlias come from seeds, about 30,000 of which are planted a year. From those, only 1,000 of the tubers are deemed worth planting again. As those flowers grow, genetic flaws appear. Some are prone to disease, some lack color or stem strength, and others won’t hold the petals. Slowly the list of viable dahlias is whittled down to 20. Only about half of those will ever be released to the public. Those that are, such as “Bodacious,” a flaming red dahlia with yellow-tipped petals, usually win national awards at dahlia shows. “When you get a plant like that, that’s exciting,” Nicholas Gitts says, smiling.

And just as the Gitts family produces a new generation of dahlias each year, they’ve also introduced a fourth-generation farmer. Last August, Eubanks delivered her first child. “I do hope my child wants to be involved. It is a lot of hard work, but then you have the satisfaction that comes with that work and you see the results,” Eubanks says. “The harder you work, the better the dahlias get. And people really enjoy the flowers.”

Polly Campbell is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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