BATTLE GROUND RESIDENT Max Ollieu is shown here with his prize-winning dahlia blooms at the 2014 American Dahlia Society National Show, held in Tacoma Aug. 30.
SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Kalia, Max and Marla Ollieu’s granddaughter, spends some time in her grandparents’ dahlia garden.
JANELLE, Max and Marla Ollieu’s oldest daughter, is shown here with a family friend, Michelle. Janelle and Michelle, along with a number of other friends and relatives, help Max with tending his dahlia garden.
ONE OF MAX and Marla Ollieu’s daughters, Celeste, is shown here among her parents’ garden of dahlias. Celeste and her family recently visited from Virginia to celebrate Marla’s birthday.
Although Max Ollieu said he does grow a few other varieties of flowers here and there, the 75-year-old Battle Ground resident is by his own admission “pretty much a dahlia junkie.”
“I love fuchsias and I have a few of those and a few other small things, but for some reason I don’t put as much work into those flowers,” Ollieu said. “I don’t consider myself a very good gardener. I was raised on a farm in southern Idaho, so my dahlias are out here in rows. I just grow them and show them, just for the fun of it.”
On Aug. 30, Ollieu entered some of his dahlia blooms in the 2014 American Dahlia Society National Show, which was held in Tacoma. Two blooms from his garden were elevated to the “head table,” the Table of Honor. The bloom of Trengrove Millenium won Best in Show for fully double bloom entry and his single bloom of Chimacum Davi was chosen as Best Miniature Ball single bloom entry.
In addition to those blooms, Ollieu’s entry of Little Willo was chosen as Best Five Bloom Pom entry in the show and the Alpen Amy blooms were chosen as Best Five Bloom Orchette entry. Ollieu said this was his fourth time entering blooms in the American Dahlia Society National Show, but this was the first time any of them have reached the head table.
“It’s pretty remarkable for me,” Ollieu said. “The show includes people from all over the U.S. and Canada.”
Ollieu said he and his wife, Marla, started growing dahlias when they moved to the Battle Ground area in 1991. As Marla was out walking one day, a neighbor up the road gave her some dahlia tubers.
“I didn’t really know anything about dahlias, I thought they were chrysanthemums,” Ollieu said. “But dahlias do fantastic here.”
Ollieu said the couple they brought their house from in 1991 had a pretty good sized garden, but he decided to plan the dahlias under a big tree. When they didn’t bloom the first couple of years, he decided to transplant them into the garden and they began to bloom.
“There is so much variety with dahlias,” he said. “There’s little round ones, big dinner plate sized ones and there’s all these different forms and colors. I guess I’m just a recreational dahlia grower.”
Currently, Ollieu said he and his wife have about 60 different varieties of dahlias in their garden. Eventually, he decided he wanted to find out more about other dahlia growers’ tricks, so he joined the Portland Dahlia Society.
“It just seems like dahlia growers are really nice people,” he said. “We’re like a bunch of bees, we just do what we do with that we’re given. You just learn from other people and see if what they are doing will work in your own garden.”
Ollieu said he doesn’t sell his dahlia tubers or anything, he simply gives them away to relatives, friends and to other dahlia societies around the area.
“I’ve given them to other clubs, especially is they have some shortage for some reason or something,” he said.
Ollieu is retired from working with the U.S. Forest Service. He has two degrees from the University of Idaho in forestry. He and his wife, Marla, have two grown daughters.
