Dahlia Legacy Project

Dick and Susan Ambrose Profile

Complied by Christine Tareen and Lynda Quinn –  July 2023

For anyone addicted to dahlias, the prefix Camano is a household staple and rightfully so. The hybridizers, Dick and Susan Ambrose, have been creating fully double dahlias for longer than most of today’s modern dahlia lovers have been growing, and are still at it today. Over those years, they have introduced more than 100 cultivars – of those they have earned six Lynn B. Dudley medals, five Derrill Hart medals, two Stanley Johnson medals, and several international awards as well.

EARLY DAYS:

Dick and Susan both grew up in Idaho and both graduated from the University of Idaho, but their paths never crossed until 1967, when they taught together in Wendell. That summer they were married and by the fall they were teaching together in Stanwood, Washington and living on Camano Island. The following year they bought a house on an acre of land and have been living there ever since.

Susan taught for one year, till her first of two sons were born, and then stayed home. Dick continued to teach math at Stanwood High School and coached the academic teams until he retired in 1999. During the early years, Susan tended a vegetable garden with her first-born Kirk and Dick finished his master’s degree taking summer school. After that the year was 1971, and the Ambroses grew their first dahlias from a packet of Burpee seeds. The flowers were nothing stellar, but to the novice Ambroses they were magnificent, and the couple was hooked. The following year Dick and Susan visited the Snohomish County Dahlia Society (SCDS) show at Forest Park, where the blooms knocked their socks off. They joined the club on the spot and quickly ditched the Burpee seeds. Dick Matthies gave them new seeds from good seed parents and from those seeds came their first introduction, Camano Cloud. The Ambroses followed the Matthies’ lead, and named cultivars using their island as the prefix. For a time, “Camano” was used for varieties that went through the ADS process and “Island” was used for all the others, except a few didn’t get prefixes at all, like Oh Yeah! and Pugsley. However now, Camano is used for all new Ambrose introductions. A lot of their dahlias are named for cats; some honor their grandchildren. As of today, Dick and Susan still have two grandchildren and two cats to commemorate, so they are not done yet. 

SHOWING:

If Dick and Susan weren’t already addicted to dahlias when they entered into their first dahlia show, they definitely came out addicted. Susan, having an eye for perfection, brought in a triple of a variety their neighbor had given them, but she didn’t know the name of it. It was too good of a specimen to leave behind, so Susan just put it out. However, Doris Tollefson found the nameless entry and brought it back to Susan saying that it had to have a name. After much discussion and searching, the ladies decided to call it Pink Giraffe, since it looked like Giraffe but was pink. And surprisingly, it made it all the way to the head table! Nothing like winning big at your first show to secure a life-long love of dahlia competing. After that, Dick and Susan competed in many shows, going to just about any show within driving distance; sometimes even making multiple trips. At one time SCDS had Friday night entry so, they used floral preserve and sent a truckful down early. Then again on Saturday morning, they brought down another truck load. If a show was far away and the journey was going to be hot, they turned their truck into a refrigerator by taping aluminum foil to the inside of the windows and placing ice blocks in between the dahlias. Dahlia showing was serious business for them, and they were really good at it, but it wasn’t all about winning big. For Dick, his main objective was to fill the show hall with blue ribbon winners. Head table winners were just an added bonus, an added bonus he enjoyed often. For years the Ambroses exhibited together as a team by putting both their names on their entries. However, this caused them to be winning the sweepstakes at most of the shows, which rubbed other competitors the wrong way, so they decided to split the entries. Dick entered the Bs and larger, plus seedlings, and Susan entered her name on all the BB and smaller varieties.

Another aspect of showing that Dick and Susan love is the people. Over the years they met many dahlia enthusiasts far and wide; each with interesting backgrounds and various vocations, but all with a common interest. It was at their second show in Grays Harbor that they met Phil Traff. Susan was struggling to stage a triple on the tailgate of their truck, when Phil walked by with his magic fingers and fixed it up for her. Not surprisingly, it went to the head table; from then on, they were friends. It was Phil who introduced Susan to Gordie Leroux; an introduction that eventually led Gordie to join SCDS and become another life -long friend to the Ambroses. For many years, they hosted visitors to their home. Among the guest list were many other legends: Phil Traff, Gordie Leroux, Les Steenfott, Dick and Patti Matthies, Ed Corning (who also brought with him many visitors from far off countries) Derek Hewlett, Keith Hammet, Dave Spencer, Tom Bebbington, and the list goes on.

Apart from showing, Dick and Susan were active key players in the dahlia world. Dick followed the judging path, first becoming a candidate judge. But then he skipped accredited judge altogether and advanced straight to senior judge. How you ask? Well, he managed to impress the instructor, Willis Collins, by finishing the written test in five minutes! After that, Dick went on to teach judging classes for the Federation of Northwest Dahlia Growers. Dick also was the president of his home club, Snohomish County Dahlia Society, with Susan by his side as secretary. For Susan, the pressure of judging didn’t interest her so she chose to clerk. She loved to find her section and then organize it before the judges got there. Her great clerking skills were recognized by Phil  Traff, and he assigned her to be ADS clerk; after that she was assigned to be ADS Clerk everywhere she went. At the time, the rules for judging the ADS bench said that each judge had to be within three points of the average of the other two. In other words, if two judges averaged a dahlia 86 and one scored it an 82, the low score would be thrown out and instead of scoring 84.7 it would score 86. But this rule wasn’t being followed, so Susan spent a lot of time tracking down judges to change their score cards. Finally, when Susan became ADS Vice President, she got them to change the rule so all three scores counted in the average. Phil also drafted Susan to proofread the first Dahlias of Today publication, after all, she was an English teacher. For years she wrote about dahlias in the trial garden and also about new dahlias coming out of the Northwest. Sporadically, over the years, she wrote other articles containing funny stories, each article capturing forever on paper her spunky personality. For those interested, her three-part article called “Those Were the Days” published in years 2018, 2019, and 2020 is a must read. Eventually, she passed on her pen to Roger Walker and Marilyn Walton, who took over writing about the new dahlias, but she kept proofreading Dahlias of Today until 2022.

GROWING:

When Dick and Susan were not off competing in dahlia shows, they were home tending to their one-acre farm. In the garden, the Ambroses split some of the horticultural practices and shared others. In February, Dick would start taking cutting using Oasis cubes to root them, and then transplanted them into pots. Mid-March he would start seeds which got hardened off in May and then planted in the ground. Around the same time, Dick rototilled and pounded in the stakes; then Susan stapled on the labels, sorted the dahlias, and planted them.  She started each day planting the tubers six inches deep, but by the end of the day when she was tired, the tubers were barely under the ground. After the tubers were all in, Dick would install the soaker hoses. When it came time to pinch, disbud, weed, and tie up the dahlias, Dick would perform those tasks on Bs and larger, and the seedlings. Susan performed the same chores on the BBs and smaller. Dick and Susan say disbudding and pinching dahlias, but not pinching pompons, is something new dahlia growers should not forget to do.

Even though they only had an acre of land, that didn’t limit them. At their peak, they grew 5000 dahlias; 2000 were named varieties and the rest were seedlings. In the seedling patch, Dick did the evaluating and pulled out the obvious losers. Open centered varieties were the first to go because he did not want them crossing with the fully double blooms. That kind of cross gives you dahlias blooms with four or five rows of petals. From those 3000 seedlings, only about 100 made the cut to be kept over to the next year. Of those 100, only one or two made it to become Camano dahlias. For Dick, growing seedlings is his favorite part of growing dahlias. He loves checking on them daily, or more than once a day, and seeing what new has bloomed. His ultimate goal was to find a good giant (AA) variety. When doing so, the Ambroses let the bees do the work, instead of hand pollinating. To help the process, they plant like sizes together and if they have two they want to cross specifically, those are planted next to each other. They also increase the odds by plucking petals from blooms that don’t blow their centers when ripe. Seed is collected from the best-looking seed parents and planted out the next year. And to keep it even simpler, they don’t keep super detailed notes, but they do note which seed parents produce the best offspring and remember to use them for years to come.

For Susan, her favorite part of growing dahlias was the weeding! She loved to weed, as it is a great way to take out frustrations, and the end result was so satisfying.  Susan also loved to point out winners. Many times, she would hone in on one particular flower and exclaim “this one is going to the head table”– and she wouldn’t be wrong. When picking blooms for a show she was meticulous, only placing the best in her bucket to be staged. Dick was the opposite, he would pick darn near the whole plant and then decide at staging who was good enough to go in a show vase. Together they were unstoppable. At the end of the season, they continued to share the workload. Dick would dig and wash the clumps and Susan would divide, label, and store all the tubers.  All this worked very well for many years until Susan, due to life’s cruel trick of aging, could no longer go in the garden or see the eyes to divide. So Dick happily took over all the task; Susan retired from the labor but not from the love of dahlias. 

OTHER INTERESTS:

Besides dahlias, Dick and Susan also loved the Mariners. They called themselves long-suffering Mariners fans. From February to October, they were hooked. If they couldn’t watch on the television, they had the radio on listening to the game. When their kids were in school, each kid got two Mariners tickets if they made the honor roll, which they did often so the family went to lots of games. And yes, they were in nose-bleed-heaven when Edgar drove Junior home. Another love for Dick was photography, his dahlias being one of his main subjects but he also loved to photograph birds. He often used said photographs for calendars, and gifted them to friends and family at Christmas time.

Currently Dick and Susan are still active members of SCDS and frequent many dahlia events. In up coming years expect to see more head table blooms and stunning new cultivars from these amazing legends.

2010 Nominee Federation of Northwest Dahlia Growers Hall of Fame

Snohomish County Dahlia Society nominates Dick and Susan Ambrose for inclusion into the Federation Hall of Fame. Dick and Susan are renowned worldwide as hybridizers of fully double dahlias; the American Dahlia Society recognizes nearly 90 cultivars as Ambrose introductions. Their introductions have garnered 6 Lynn B. Dudley awards, 5 Derrill W. Hart awards, 2 Stanley Johnson medals, and several international awards as well. Dick and Susan have been involved in dahlias since 1973 and they continue to develop new varieties and exhibit winning dahlias at many of our Federation shows.

In addition to hybridizing, Dick and Susan have contributed in many ways to the Federation of Northwest Dahlia Growers. They were central characters in the founding of the Federation. Dick has been a Federation judging instructor for many years and also served as classification committee chairman. He has held numerous offices in both the Snohomish and Skagit dahlia societies.

For nearly 20 years, Susan maintained the show records for the Federation. She is an editor of Dahlias of Today and wrote the feature article on new variety introductions in the Pacific Northwest starting with the first edition in 1982 and continuing until 2006. It is hard to imagine a dahlia world in the Pacific Northwest without their many contributions.

Cultivar	Size	Form	Color	Color Description	Orig.	Cntry	Year
BIT O’ BRET	M	FD	PR		AMB-	US	81
CAMANO ARIEL	B	C	LB	Y/PK	AM-	US	90
CAMANO AUTUMN	B	ID	LB	OR3/YL18	AM-	US	09
CAMANO BRAM	A	FD	LB	OR2/YL5	AM-	US	02
CAMANO BUZ	M	FD	OR	OR18	AM-	US	02
CAMANO CANDY		BA	PK		AM-	US	81
CAMANO CHOICE	BB	FD	L		AM-	US	81
CAMANO CLASSIC	B	IC	OR		AM-	US	81
CAMANO CLOUD	BB	SC	PK	PK12	AM-	US	78
CAMANO COHO	A	C	PK		AM-	US	87
CAMANO COLOSSUS	A	SC	LB	BR/Y	AM-	US	90
CAMANO CONCORD	B	IC	PR	PR25	AM-	US	09
CAMANO COTTON	M	FD	W		AM-	US	02
CAMANO CRASH	B	ID	R	RD9	AM-	US	13
CAMANO CRUSH	BB	ID	LB	Y/PK	AM-	US	80
CAMANO DENALI	B	SC	DB	DP5/YL12	AM-	US	00
CAMANO DEREK	BB	FD	Y		AM-	US	04
CAMANO DESIRE	B	SC	DR		AM-	US	92
CAMANO DEVIL	BB	SC	FL		AM-	US	02*
CAMANO DOT	M	FD	Y		AM-	US	02
CAMANO DREAMING	BB	FD	L		AM-	US	07
CAMANO ELECTRA	BB	C	PR	PR24	AM-	US	03
CAMANO EMBERS	A	SC	OR		AM-	US	84
CAMANO FIRESTORM	B	SC	R		AM-	US	91
CAMANO FLING	A	C	LB	L/W	AM-	US	90
CAMANO FROST	B	SC	W		AM-	US	92
CAMANO GRACE	B	C	LB	W/L	AM-	US	00
CAMANO HONEY	B	ID	BR	BR12/BR8	AM-	US	05
CAMANO IMP	BB	C	DB	R/Y	AM-	US	02
CAMANO IVORY	B	IC	W	WH6	AM-	US	89
CAMANO JOY	B	IC	PR		AM-	US	05
CAMANO LADY	B	SC	LB	PK/Y	AM-	US	92
CAMANO LEMON	M	FD	Y		AM-	US	93
CAMANO LIGHT	BB	SC	Y		AM-	US	97
CAMANO LOVE		MB	PK	PK23	AM-	US	10
CAMANO MAJESTY	B	SC	PR		AM-	US	82*
CAMANO MARMALADE		WL	OR		AM-	US	95*
CAMANO MELON	A	SC	PK		AM-	US	79
CAMANO MESSENGER	A	IC	LB	PK23/YL9	AM-	US	91
CAMANO MORDOR		BA	DB	DP11/PK14	AM-	US	13*
CAMANO MYSTERY	BB	FD	DP	DP12	AM-	US	06
CAMANO NIMBUS	A	ID	R	RD22	AM-	US	06
CAMANO PASSION	B	SC	LB	PK/W	AM-	US	97
CAMANO PEARL	BB	FD	LB	W/L	AM-	US	78
CAMANO PET		ST	LB	YL19/OR4	AM-	US	97
CAMANO PHANTOM	BB	FD	PR		AM-	US	05
CAMANO POPPET		BA	R		AM-	US	79
CAMANO PRINCE		P	PR		AM-	US	89
CAMANO PROSPERO	A	IC	LB	Y/LV	AM-	US	91
CAMANO PUFF	BB	LC	LB	PK/L	AM-	US	99
CAMANO RASCAL	B	IC	BI	RD19/WH1	AM-	US	05
CAMANO REGAL	B	SC	PR		AM-	US	94*
CAMANO RETRO	BB	FD	OR		AM-	US	13
CAMANO ROO	BB	FD	DP	DP10	AM-	US	07
CAMANO SHADOWS	B	IC	DB	PR/W	AM-	US	90
CAMANO SITKA	B	IC	LB	BR10/YL5	AM-	US	00
CAMANO SNUFFLES	B	C	DP		AM-	US	02
CAMANO SPARKLE	B	SC	LB	PK/Y	AM-	US	85
CAMANO SPIKEY	BB	C	DP		AM-	US	81
CAMANO SPLENDOR	B	ID	Y		AM-	US	84
CAMANO STROLL	BB	FD	Y	YL11	AM-	US	11*
CAMANO SUNSHINE	B	ID	Y		AM-	US	12
CAMANO SUSAN	BB	SC	OR	OR19	AM-	US	04
CAMANO TALL COTTON	M	FD	W		AM-	US	04
CAMANO THUNDER	BB	IC	PR	PR24	AM-	US	97
CAMANO TITAN	AA	ID	PK		AM-	US	86
CAMANO TWILIGHT	B	IC	DP		AM-	US	85
CAMANO VAMP	BB	SC	LB	OR6/YL18	AM-	US	14
CAMANO VELVET	BB	FD	DR		AM-	US	87
CAMANO VERITY	BB	FD	Y		AM-	US	01
CAMANO WHITECAP	BB	LC	W		AM-	US	79
CAMANO X-MAN		BA	R	RD23	AM-	US	08
CAMANO YOGI	B	C	R		AM-	US	15*
CAMANO ZOE		MB	PK	PK2	AM-	US	09
CAPTAIN CROSS	AA	ID	R		AME’	US	67
CHARLIE AMBROSE	AA	C	R		AME’	US	68
DENICE AMBROSE	B	LC	LB	W/PK	AM-	US	63
ISLAND BLAZE	BB	IC	FL		AM-	US	87
ISLAND CARNIVAL	B	FD	V	Y/DR	AM-	US	85
ISLAND CONFECTION	B	SC	DP		AM-	US	01
ISLAND DAWN		WL	LB	Y/PK	AM-	US	85
ISLAND FLARE	A	SC	FL	BR14/YL17	AM-	US	93*
ISLAND FOIL	B	ID	OR		AM-	US	79
ISLAND GARNET	BB	FD	DR		AM-	US	88
ISLAND GLOW	B	SC	LB	OR/Y	AM-	US	94
ISLAND HONEY	B	SC	BR		AM-	US	93
ISLAND JEWEL	B	IC	LB	PK/W	AM-	US	02
ISLAND LUNA	B	FD	Y		AM-	US	02
ISLAND NYMPH		WL	PK		AM-	US	78*
ISLAND PARTY		BA	PR		AM-	US	09*
ISLAND RITZ	BB	FD	DP		AM-	US	90
ISLAND RUBY	M	FD	DR		AM-	US	83
ISLAND SUNSHINE	BB	SC	Y		AM-	US	92
ISLAND SURVIVOR	B	SC	OR		AM-	US	93*
ISLAND TANGERINE	BB	C	OR		AM-	US	92
ISLAND VAGABOND	A	ID	Y		AM-	US	92
ISLE OF FIRE	BB	SC	FL		AM-	US	84
OH YEAH!		ST	DB	Y/OR	AM-	US	05
P C	BB	ID	DB	Y/BR	AM-	US	88
PINK CARNIVAL	B	FD	V	PK/DR	AM-	US	86
PINK PET		ST	DP	DP21	AM-	US	05
PRIMROSE PET		ST	Y	YL9	AM-	US	03
PUGSLEY	B	C	OR		AM-	US	93*
SUPERNOVA	A	SC	LB	DP/Y	AMK-	US	84