Rhodos Rediscovered

By Kathleen Freimond | Image: Bill Dale

R. 'Cynthia' at Beacon Hill Park

As a young surveyor in a Royal Canadian Air Force construction unit based at Ucluelet during the Second World War, Bill Dale, much like every other young man at the base, was immersed in the day-to-day news from Europe and the support requirements of the seaplane base in the village. Gardens were probably the farthest thing from his mind.

However, had he wandered into the village and chanced upon the property owned by George Fraser, he would likely have been as captivated with the garden as was one-time resident Marion Crossley, who later wrote: “Many ornamental trees: plums, cherries, almonds, several varieties of oak and birch as well as numerous less common deciduous ones grew in the garden.

There were also monkey puzzles, green and variegated hollies, a Japanese umbrella pine, a magnolia, and many varieties of evergreens, both the ones that were indigenous to the region and species from elsewhere. During the summer the garden was enriched by masses of annuals and biennials. Sweet peas climbed up the shed wall. There were great quantities of foxgloves, hollyhocks, brilliant patches of marigolds and zinnias, cosmos, geraniums, nasturtiums, lupins, delphiniums, ageratum, poppies and fragrant lilies. In shady corners were beds of tuberous begonias which added to the kaleidoscope of colours.”

But George Fraser’s main focus was not on the colourful beds so vividly recalled by Crossley but rather the thousands of rhododendrons he nurtured on the property. Hybridizing became his passion and he was one of the earliest rhododendron hybridizers in North America.

R. Fraseri

Fraser died in 1944 near the end of the Second World War, and in 1948 his property was subdivided into building lots. The memory of his contribution to the genus faded over the years until Bill Dale, along with the late Dr. Stuart Holland (former chief geologist of B.C.) and Frances Gundry, an archivist with the provincial archives, researched his legacy.

Bill, Stuart and Frances, all members of the Victoria Genealogy Association, first collaborated to research the history of John Blair, who designed and landscaped Beacon Hill Park in Victoria in the late 1880s. Blair hired a fellow Scot – George Fraser – as his foreman. Many of the shrubs and trees planted by Blair and Fraser can still be seen in the park – probably the most striking is a group of four Rhododendron ‘Cynthia’ near Fountain Lake. The 6-m (20-ft.) plants are covered each spring with a mass of red-pink blooms. (Fraser would later name one of his most beautiful hybrids for his friend Blair.)

R. 'Albert Close'

Following their research on Blair, the trio decided to focus on Fraser. They walked the streets of Ucluelet to track down rhododendrons planted by the pioneer, and interviewed residents of Ucluelet who could still remember the old man who taught local children to play the fiddle and gave sprigs of white heather (for good luck) to visitors to his garden. They unearthed reports on his work in early gardening publications and found correspondence between Fraser and the noted hybridizer Joseph B. Gable of Stewartstown, PA, as well as with the curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Although Fraser’s work had largely been forgotten when they started their research, they found he was well-respected by his peers during his lifetime. Fraser wrote: “In 1925 I was made a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, an honour reserved for those preeminent in horticulture.” Three years later he was elected first vice-president of the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen and in 1936 he was honoured as the first life member of the Vancouver Island Horticultural Association.

While Fraser was an enthusiastic hybridizer, relatively few plants were named and unfortunately all his botanical and horticultural notes were destroyed by a fire after his death. His most well-known hybrids include the following:

R. ‘Fraseri’ – Fraser crossed R. canadense with R. japonicum. The cross bloomed in 1919 and was named R. ‘Fraseri’ by William Watson, curator of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. R. ‘Fraseri’ is fairly widely grown in gardens on southern Vancouver Island, and in the Ucluelet area there are plants estimated to be over 50 years old.

R. ‘Albert Close’ – In 1914 Fraser began hybridizing R. californicum (now called R. macrophyllum) with R. maximum, R. catawbiense and R. ponticum. A cross between R. macrophyllum and R. maximum resulted in a hybrid described as “straggly” with bright rose-pink blooms “with the throat heavily spotted with chocolate red.” This hybrid was named by his friend Joseph Gable after the chief propagator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture plant introduction station at Glen Dale, Maryland.