Drew English, The Dahlia Whisperer

From the end of July through mid-October, guests of High Hampton are treated to a brilliant display of blooms in the resort’s dahlia garden. It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1920s, thanks to Dr. William Halsted, a founding surgeon at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore who purchased High Hampton with his wife, Caroline, in 1890. The doctor was enamored with the flower and frequently traveled abroad to bring dahlia tubers back from Europe to the property, long before the blooms were well known in the U.S. “Halsted planted about an acre of dahlias, and the story is he once paid $1500 for a single tuber,” says Drew English, High Hampton’s head gardener. “In the early 1900s, a Ford Model T only cost about $750, so this was a true passion of his and an investment that paid offover time.” According to Drew, the dahlia population got so large in the area that the Cashiers post office started giving away tubers. “So all these little Appalachian cabins had dahlias growing in their gardens at the same time as the Queen of England!” he laughs.

Drew keeps Halsted’s legacy alive and thriving with 200 varieties yielding 850 plus plants. “I try to keep up with the trends. The dinnerplate dahlias are very popular, although they take more space to grow. Colors wax and wane; for a while orange was all the rage, and then the softer ‘Café Au Lait’ tones appeared everywhere.”

While the gardener plants 95% of the dahlias himself, he does open the season on Memorial Day weekend for members and guests to participate in the planting process. “They pick a tuber from the wheelbarrow, and, after a brief tutorial, they get to put their tuber in the ground and write their name on the stake,” says Drew. “Then come July, they have the rights to the first blooms of the dahlia they planted.”

Anyone with fond childhood memories of visits to the plant nursery is destined to end up with their hands in the dirt, even if a detour or two happens along the way. Drew English grew up in Summerville, South Carolina (known as “Flower Town in the Pines”), around his parents and grandparents who were avid gardeners. “They had deep Southern roots when it came to plantings, and they grew a lot of camellias, azaleas, and beautiful perennials of the Lowcountry,” he says. “Those visits to the plant nursery with them always felt like going to a fairy-tale land.” Drew’s interest in blooms grew when he was old enough to drive around and soak in the flower boxes and walled gardens in nearby Charleston. However, his professional calling into the world of gardening didn’t happen right away.

After college, Drew moved to D.C. to pursue a career in politics, but the pull of home brought him back to South Carolina in 2005 to sell real estate. He started visiting Cashiers, North Carolina, on a regular basis, and it was there that he had a garden reawakening. “I was introduced to a different plant system that was more to my liking and more forgiving without the intense heat of the Lowcountry and its short growing season,” says Drew.

Before long, he had bought property in Cashiers and was spending long weekends at the retreat tinkering with dahlias. “Their diversity and vivid color saturation is what really drew me in,” Drew says. “You can grow a large lacy variety next to a super dense ball variety, and they just complement each other so well.”

Drew began entering the dahlia shows in Highlands, racking up ribbons by the fistful. He moved to Cashiers full time in 2019 and started his business, The English Gardener, providing services such as design and restoration. Word got around that he was quite the dahlia conjurer, and when the gardener at High Hampton retired, Drew was asked to take over. And while his personal garden may have suffered—“the cobbler’s children have no shoes” metaphor applies—the garden at the resort has only flourished.

By Alice Welsh Doyle | Photography by Molly Harris

Get Drew’s tips for arranging dahlias and growing dahlias.

Learn more about High Hampton and how the resort offers the epitome of luxurious mountain hospitality with nods to its storied past.

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• A Visit to the Farmstand at Edgewater Farm
• Flower Fields and Famiglia