Spring in your step: These five gardens will give you petal powerUpdated 1 day ago

As springtime gets going, temperatures are warming up (at least slightly) and flowers are fixing to bust out all over. You may or may not feel the sun on your face when visiting these local gardens but you will definitely feel it in your soul: the return of light and life, a harbinger of summer to come.

Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens

115 S. Pekin Road, Woodland; lilacgardens.com

Lilac Days 50th Anniversary, April 19-May 11

Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily during Lilac Days; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily from May 12 to October (except holidays)

Admission: $10 for adults, $5 for seniors on Senior Days and free for children 12 and under. Garden membership is $15 per year and allows unlimited free visits

This beloved Southwest Washington gem almost became an industrial site after “Lilac Lady” Hulda Klager’s death in 1960, but the Woodland Federated Garden Club petitioned for it to be listed in state and national historic registers. The Hulda Klager Lilac Society formed in 1976 to continue Klager’s legacy and purchased her 1800s-era house, which is open for daily tours during the annual Lilac Days festival, held on the 23 days leading up to and including Mother’s Day. Visitors can also peruse the barn museum, enjoy live music and visit the tiny outdoor gift shop, which is open only during Lilac Days.

The German-born Klager emigrated to America in 1865 and moved to Woodland in 1877, where her family purchased land and built the home that guests can walk through today. While recovering from an illness in 1903, Klager’s friends gave her a book about plant hybridization. She began experimenting with apples and later with lilacs. By 1910, she’d created 14 new lilac varieties and by 1920 she had so many lilacs to show off that she opened her garden each spring so the community could enjoy the fragrant blooms. She created several new lilacs named after Northwest towns, including Longview, Kalama and Gresham, Ore.

When Klager’s husband died in 1922, she nearly gave up lilac-growing. Her son, Fritz, encouraged her to continue and so she kept nurturing her hand-pollinated plants. In 1948, the Columbia River flooded and wiped out most of her lilacs, but some larger trees survived. Friends who had purchased her lilacs over the years returned cuttings to her so she could start anew at age 83. Klager opened her blooming garden again in the spring of 1950 and opened it every year until she died. Now garden visitors can buy cuttings of Klager’s precious lilacs; proceeds help maintain the garden and keep it open so the next generation can enjoy the beauty of Klager’s hard work and perseverance.

Dates to note during the upcoming 50th anniversary season are live music on April 19, 26, 27, May 3, 9 and 10. April 27 is Royalty Day featuring appearances by Woodland Planters Days princesses. April 30 is Military Day. April 21, 28 and May 5 are Senior Days, when senior tickets are $5. May 3 is the garden’s official 50th anniversary and May 10 is Klager’s birthday celebration with cupcakes. The garden is open on Easter Sunday, April 20. Other dates to note are Art in the Garden on July 12 and Kluger Christmas on Dec. 5 and 6.

Just down the street at 1066 S. Pekin Road, Holland America Flowers is worth a visit if tulips are in bloom. The u-pick fields are free and open to the public daily through April. Tulips are 50 cents a stem. The extensive show fields also provide a colorful backdrop for family photos.

Wildlife Botanical Gardens

11000 N.E. 149th St., Brush Prairie; naturescaping.org

Hours: Dawn to dusk daily

Admission: Free

This garden, maintained by volunteers in partnership with NatureScaping of Southwest Washington, is actually an interconnected series of 10 small gardens, each designed to demonstrate beautiful, creative and environmentally responsible ways to encourage birds, pollinators and other small critters to visit your backyard.

Individual gardens are listed at naturescaping.org but here are a few enticing examples: Stroll through the informal, country-style Cottage Garden or get ideas on how to create a blooming, drought-tolerant yard in the Water Wise Garden. Visit Hummingbird Place, with plants to attract migratory and resident hummingbirds. See the Flying Flowers Garden featuring flowers that butterflies love. Peek into the Northwest Bird Haven to find plants that provide food and shelter for native birds.

NatureScaping of Southwest Washington will host its annual Bare Root Trees, Shrubs and Perennials Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 26 and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 27. NatureScaping members can sign up to access the sale two hours before it opens to the public. CASEE will also sell native plants from its greenhouse and visitors can buy herbs from the Garden Delight Herb Farm booth.

Natural Gardens at Pacific Community Park

1515 N.E. 164th Ave., Vancouver; clarkgreenneighbors.org/demonstration-gardens

Hours: Dawn to dusk daily

Admission: Free

Another excellent but often overlooked demonstration garden is tucked into an east Vancouver community park at the intersection of Northeast 18th Street and Northeast 172nd Avenue. Visitors can come any time during daylight hours to see eight individual gardens that promote earth-friendly, chemical-free growing techniques, maintained by volunteers under the auspices of Clark County Green Neighbors.

Examples include the Dog-Friendly Garden highlighting “petscaping” with nontoxic, durable plants that can stand a bit of chewing or digging around the roots; the Edibles and Herbs Garden, featuring pesticide-free edible fruits, vegetables and herb varieties not found at the grocery store; the Rain Garden, which naturally collects, absorbs and filters stormwater runoff from roofs and driveways; and the Xeriscaping Garden, featuring succulents, native wildflowers and ornamental grasses that look attractive year-round without any watering other than what nature provides.

Download a map of the Natural Gardens from the website, where you can also find a useful “plant library” with information about plants featured in the garden.

Fort Vancouver Garden

1001 E. Fifth St. in Vancouver, directly in front of the entrance to the reconstructed Fort Vancouver; nps.gov/thingstodo/fovagarden.htm

Hours: Dawn to dusk daily; parking lot is open 8 a.m.-4 p.m. through May 25 or 8 a.m.-5 p.m. May 26 to Sept. 21

Admission: Free. Admission to Fort Vancouver is $10, where you can see garden produce used in the fort’s kitchen.

Though the present garden is not in its original, 8-acre site, it’s a beautiful example of the many vegetables, fruits, berries and herbs that fed Hudson’s Bay Company employees in the 1800s. The small but extremely productive garden is maintained in meticulous historical detail by a small army of volunteers.

All plants grown in the modern garden are based on historic records and archaeological excavations. Some plants are immediately recognizable, like squash, sunflowers and rosemary. However, visitors won’t see lavender, although it was widely grown in the mid-1800s, because it’s not mentioned in any garden record. The plot’s abundant produce is harvested by volunteers and used to make period-accurate dishes in the Fort Vancouver kitchen building — dried, roasted, stewed, baked, pickled or preserved according to recipes of the time.

Because the garden is so labor-intensive, visitors may encounter garden volunteers at work. The National Park Service encourages guests to ask questions because the garden is a piece of living history. Volunteers have a wealth of information about heritage plant varieties, Northwest growing techniques and the culinary habits of Fort Vancouver’s historical residents. Out of respect for the volunteers’ work and the garden’s importance to historical education, garden guests should keep pets and cigarettes out of the garden and not collect produce, cuttings or seeds. Instead, ask a volunteer or park ranger where plants can be acquired.

Jane Weber Evergreen Arboretum

9215 S.E. Evergreen Highway, Vancouver; ejaneweberarboretum.org/

Hours: Dawn to dusk daily

Admission: Free

The Jane Weber Evergreen Arboretum is an 8-acre parcel stretching from Evergreen Boulevard to the Columbia River. Not many people know about it but those who do are passionate devotees. It’s no wonder: The garden includes a picturesque portion of Mill Creek, a huge variety of flowers, shrubs and trees and the circa-1867 John Stanger House. The Stanger House is on the National Register of Historical Places as Clark County’s oldest private home (although the Covington Historic House, built in 1848 as a residence and boarding school, is listed as the oldest house in Washington State).

The property was once owned by E. Jane Weber and her husband, Vinson Weber, who moved to Washington in the 1940s. Weber worked as a teacher at Hudson’s Bay High School while Vinson led the University of Oregon’s dentistry program. The couple lived in an angular midcentury house overlooking the creek and tended the surrounding gardens along with a separate parcel of land by the riverside. Later, they connected the two parcels by purchasing the Stanger property, which was at one time home to the late Congressman Don Bonker and his wife, Carolyn. Jane continued improving the garden until her death in 1974. Vinson died in 2000. They’re buried on the property under a tall purple azalea where visitors can rest on a granite bench.

The garden will host an open house from 1 to 4 p.m. May 3, at which time the Stanger House, which is usually closed, will be open to the public. Guests can enjoy cookies, coffee and lemonade and learn about volunteer opportunities. Until then, visitors can drop by any day to enjoy the few lingering camellias as well as soon-to-bloom lilacs, azaleas and rhododendrons. See the southern magnolia “witness tree” between the Weber and Stanger homes and follow the Path of Heroines honoring local women who have made significant contributions to the community, like late parks advocate Florence Wager.

This article has been updated to reflect the correct date of E. Jane Weber’s death.