Editing Woodland, Washington (section)

===Hulda Klager===
Woodland is perhaps best known as the home of [[Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens|Hulda Klager]] (1863–1960), who was a prolific breeder of lilacs. Known as the "Lilac Lady," Klager (née Thiel) was long the pride of Woodland. She immigrated from Germany to Wisconsin in 1865, when she was just two years old, and came West when her family bought a farm in Woodland. Later she married and settled down on the family farm. When a friend gave her a book about Luther Burbank, she began creating flowers, hybridizing new varieties of roses, dahlias, even apples, and lilacs in particular. By 1920 she had created such a magnificent array of new hand-pollinated lilacs that she opened her garden on Lilac Week every spring for visitors.<ref name="Virginia Urrutia 1998 pp. 193">Virginia Urrutia, ''They Came to Six Rivers'' (Kelso, WA: Cowlitz County Historical Society, 1998) pp. 193</ref> The floodwaters of 1948 rolled over her garden, destroying every shrub and hand-pollinated lilac. The loss grieved those who visited her garden or who had purchased her lilacs. From all over the Northwest, people sent starts of her lilacs from their own gardens. By 1950, at the age of eighty-seven, Klager, who loved flowers and who had been honored by the state of Washington as well as such organizations as the nationally famous arboretum at [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], again opened her home for Lilac Week. After her death in 1960, the Woodland Federated Garden Club, shocked that the garden might be bulldozed for industry, succeeded in raising money to buy it and have it declared a state and national historic site.<ref name="Virginia Urrutia 1998 pp. 193"/>

In 1964, her house and lilac gardens were saved from being torn down to make room for an industrial site, and are currently maintained as a state and [[National Historic Landmark]] by the Lilac Society.