The azalea king: North Carolina's azalea queens are crowned here each year but this Wilmington gardner is king

Flower & Garden Magazine, April-May, 1996 by Kay Melchisedech Olson

Frothy Clouds of Pink Blossoms fringe the landscape of North Carolina every spring, but nowhere more brilliantly than in Wilmington. There is something special about this particular locale -- lush lowlands dominated by stately oaks and shimmering pines, nestled on the Atlantic coast just beyond the Cape Fear River -- that makes it especially inviting. The climate and soil here are especially hospitable to acid-loving plants and may have helped earn Wilmington its distinction as "the city of a million azaleas."

The state's Azalea Festival is held each spring in Wilmington. Among the many festivities -- speeches, concerts, parades and the crowning of the Azalea Queen -- is the Cape Fear Garden Club's annual Azalea Garden Tour. One of the founders of the 43-year-old, self-guided tour is octogenarian Henry Rehder Sr., whose home on Oleander Drive is a regular garden tour stop. He is a well-known horticulturist and community leader in Wilmington, where his family's fourth-generation floral shop is practically a city landmark.

Rehder and his late wife, Barbara, moved into their home as newlyweds in the summer of 1945, while he was home on special leave from the U.S. Maritime Service. They raised three sons and a daughter here as well as a spectacular garden bordered with hundreds of azaleas. Over time, the garden has been sculpted into a series of small garden rooms. Designed for pleasure and longlasting greenery, the chain of small gardens is the result of careful planning and attention to light at all hours of the day. The sun's movement creates interesting and changing shadows long after the colorful blossoms of spring have faded.

The front of Rehder's white, two-story Dutch Colonial-style home is steeped in Southern charm and graced with a yellow canopy of banksia roses. A hedge of dwarf yaupon borders the garden in the front of the house, which is screened from the courtyard by Yoshino cherry trees, a Japanese maple, dogwoods, redbuds and a century-old white camellia that belonged to Rehder's grandparents. Here the white azalea `Mrs. George G. Gerbing' is the star.

A colorful screen of camellias is the feature of the next garden, complemented with Indica and Kurume azaleas in various shades ranging from white to pink and on to lavender. The oval of lawn in the center of this blooming profusion is interrupted only by the trunk of a stately long-leaf pine, which occasionally drops a massive pine cone onto the expanse of green.

A stone walkway bordered by azaleas links this garden room to the next, which is a more formal garden featuring a brick wall with a small fountain graced by impish nymph statues the Rehders brought home from an excursion to Italy years ago. Here the Azalea Queen is crowned each year; Rehder can recite the names of former "royals" in his soft-spoken drawl with a comment or anecdote to go with each.

A few steps up from the formal garden brings the visitor to the patio garden at the side of the house. White wrought-iron patio furniture, waiting to be of service for garden parties or to the many visitors who stop by, stands in contrast to the brilliant green grass. Groupings of bold pink tulips bordered by bright yellow and purple pansies make a colorful but subtle division between these garden rooms. A gate beyond the patio garden reveals a serene shadow garden under a canopy of Yoshino cherry trees that sprinkle the garden floor with petals in springtime.

A more utilitarian use is made of the back yard, where a greenhouse was added several years ago. A white picket fence borders the side of the backyard garden opposite the greenhouse. In between, groupings and borders of spring-flowering bulbs, irises and a variety of annual and perennial flowers lend their dazzling color. Behind the ornamentals, straight rows of spinach, onions, turnips, mustard, three kinds of lettuce and potatoes make up a compact vegetable plot. In the same vicinity, a strawberry bed and peach tree provide other edibles.

But it is the single `Brown Turkey' fig tree in the back yard that brings Rehder and his family the most delight at the table. For a few weeks between mid-July and early August, Rehder keeps a watchful eye on the tree to time the precise moment when the figs are right for picking. He describes the definitive ripe fig as one that is slightly green and firm but not too hard. He insists they must be picked before they turn purple and droop. Rehder uses the figs to cook up his famous sweet pickled figs, a treat sealed in half-pint jars to be treasured by family and friends.

Watching the effort that goes into preparing every aspect of this unique home garden for the annual azalea tour, one finds it astounding that the majority of the work is done by one elderly Southern gentleman. Rehder is an accomplished horticulturist who estimates his springtime garden includes about 100 types of flowers, although he admits he is not able to name them all. He has been a camellia judge at the national level and has himself registered four new varieties of camellias: `Caroline Rehder' (in honor of a granddaughter), `Will Rehder' (in honor of his father), `Sasanqua Nora' and `Lady Ban Sittart Pink.'