Charles Owen Dexter got some bad news in 1921.  At age 59, his doctor told him he didn’t have long to live.  What would you do if you got news like that? If you were Charles Dexter, you’d buy some beautiful, rolling farmland on Cape Cod and start hybridizing rhododendrons like there’s no tomorrow.  In fact, there were a lot more tomorrows in store for Dexter—he lived another twenty-two years!  That gave him plenty of time to work on his rhododendron hobby.

The rhododendron is a hardy flowering plant (the name comes from the Greek words for “rose tree”) that grows all over Asia, North America and parts of Australia.  Rhodies can grow to be twenty feet or taller and are known for their showy flowers that bloom in late spring.  When Dexter embarked on his rhododendron adventure, he wanted to cross the hardy ‘ironclad’ hybrids available in his local New England nurseries with the more beautiful, but delicate, varieties imported from Europe.  Later, he experimented with some Asiatic cultivars as well.  Over the next two decades, he and his chief gardener, Antonio Consolini, produced between 150,000 to 200,000 seedlings, which they planted all over the farm.  Dexter’s plants often bloomed much sooner than other hybrids, but he got a reputation for shoddy work because he so often gave away seedlings before adequately judging their quality.  The weaker varieties gave the impression that his work was less significant than it really was.  Fortunately, the importance of his botanical contribution was recognized shortly after his death in 1943, when a group of horticulturists got together to select and propagate the best of Dexter’s hybrids.  Today, more than one hundred of the named Dexter cultivars can be found at Heritage Museums & Gardens, which was once Charles Dexter’s farm.

Each spring the grounds at Heritage burst into waves of vivid color.  Clusters of showy blossoms hang overhead, frame the pathways and shimmer in the sunlight among the trees, brilliant in pinks, reds, purples, white and even the rare yellow.  For the month or so while the rhodies bloom, we admire the beauty of what Dexter brought to the world when he thought he had so little time left in it.  It is a reminder to enjoy each day, especially the days we can spend in a garden.