Chimacum & Valley Dahlias · Chimacum, Washington
David & Leone Smith
David and Leone Smith bought two dahlia plants from Burpee in 1982 and were mentored into hybridizing by Les Connell at the Washington State Dahlia Club, who told them to collect their own seed and see what came up. They retired from teaching in 1995 and moved the following year to a small farm on the rich valley peat at Chimacum, Washington, where at their peak they grew thirteen 75 foot rows. Their introductions carry the Chimacum and Valley prefixes and are grown worldwide. Valley Porcupine, a 2002 novelty, won the Stanley Johnson Medal; Chimacum Troy took the Lynn B. Dudley Medal and, per the Dahlia Legacy Project, has been the number one Cream of the Crop and on the ADS Fab 50 for five consecutive years. Chimacum Pumpkin and Chimacum Zyair carry further medals. The Smiths served on the ADS Classification Committee and taught the candidate judges class for many years. They entered the Federation of Northwest Dahlia Growers Hall of Fame in 2011 and received the American Dahlia Society President's Award in 2014. Their son Matt now runs the farm.
- Dahlia Legacy Project, Smith, David & Leone (Chimacum & Valley Dahlias)
- Stanford Dahlia Project registry record, Chimacum Troy
- Idlewild Blooms, Chimacum Katie
Profiled varieties
Chimacum Night
Chocolatey burgundy mahogany, classed dark red by DahliaAddict. Floret simply calls the blooms beautiful mahogany, and in the field they read like dark chocolate with a red wine glaze.
Chimacum Katie
Saturated hot pink, closer to bubblegum than to rose, and it holds that intensity rather than fading through the season. The ADS files it under the lavender color class, chip LV10, which catches people out. Every grower who describes the flower, including Idlewild in the same breath as its own lavender classification, calls it bold, bright, and pink. Read the class as registry bookkeeping, not as a description of what lands in the vase.
Chimacum Troy
Wine red rather than anything most people would call purple. Idlewild calls it a nice burgundy merlot, Floret the color of red wine, and Heirloom Soul burgundy wine and dark and moody. The ADS files it under the purple color class, chip PR28, which is the registry's nearest bin rather than a description; filed here under burgundy and black, where the flower actually reads.