Peter Pan’s Wendy Uses Her Fairy Dust
to Make Beautiful Flowers

What Happens When a Young Hybridizer Grows Up
A Look at Dawn Conrad-Shew
By Gloria White

The Hibiscus rosa sinensis is widely hybridized around the world.  The flower has captured the imagination and the hearts of the Chinese, Polynesian, Australian and American people for a very long time.  The bloom itself conjures up wild tropic places, balmy breezes, ocean sounds, and exotic locations where these lovely flowers love to grow.  From the humble beginnings with the hibiscus species, hybridizers experimented with bringing together the gene pool of two different flowers.  Once hybridizing of the hibiscus was accomplished (where two different flowers were crossed to produce a new cultivar), the endless possibilities were enough to whet the appetite of hybridizers the world over.

From Australia, you hear the names of Reg Cornwell, Les Beers, Greg and Julie Lindsay, Alan McMullen, Stan Beard, John and Audrey Marshall, and Norm Richardson to name a few.  In the United States, there are many including the late great Harry Goulding, Gordon Howard, Joe Ludick, the late Dan and his wife Yasha Brandt, Dale Dubin, Pete and Jo Conrad, and Russ and Elaine Scobey.  Here in Florida or Australia, two of the largest areas where the Queen of the Tropics is grown, I can illustrate the scope of the different possibilities in the world of Hibiscus rosa sinensis. For example, a few names made famous by these hybridizers are the following creations:  Ten Thirty Seven, Professor Topp, New Idea, Satan’s Gold, Aussie II, Audrey M, Dorothy Olive, Great Satan, Fifth Dimension, Amber Suzanne, Herm Geller, Silver Memories, Dragon’s Breath, Capistrano, and High Voltage.  Just conjuring up a mental picture of these flowers, one could see the gems of many colors in store for those of us who venture into the realm of hybridizing the Queen of the Tropics.

In Florida, there are many hybridizers of the Queen of the Tropics. Here wehave the perfect combination of lovers of hibiscus who devote their days in a mostly sunny climate to hybridize a perfect combination of genes to make a flower worthy of any now in existence.  The name that always captured my attention is Dawn Conrad-Shew.  This young woman has managed in a very short time to create some of the loveliest flowers for all of us to enjoy.  In her efforts, she also has captured the coveted title of Hibiscus of the Year twice.  In 1993, her lovely Amber Suzanne, named after her younger sister, is a wonderful pink and cream double that stirs the heart.  Amber Suzanne has won Judge’s Bloom twice and deserves the honor.  But where was Dawn?  I had to find out her story and ask her about her flowers.

Dawn won HOTY again in 1995 with her Erika Nicole. Incidentally, the year Erika Nicole won the HOTY, Dawn's creation, Holy Smoke, came in at third place.
Both of these HOTY gems, Amber Suzanne and Erica Nicole are a wonderful mixture of pink and creamy white, quite fitting for this young hybridizer. Erika Nicole conjures up the ghost of a family free for all too! Dawn relates the time it bloomed. Jo Conrad, her mother told her to get rid of it. Jo did not see it as a marketable flower. Well, Dawn and Pete strongly disagreed with Jo on this seedling and were aware of the value of this bloom despite Jo's strong dislike of it. Dawn and Pete went ahead and grafted the plant up and the rest is history. Dawn says she reminds her mother of this all the time.

Dawn was born in 1971, when many hybridizers out there were starting to experiment with hibiscus. Her parents got into hibiscus when she was 8 or 9 years old. She and Amber Suzanne, her sister, are very different when it comes to flowers. Dawn loves the flowers, and Amber is not interested at all. Dawn began hybridizing at 13-14 years old, while helping her father in the nursery. When I mentioned that my son AJ loves to pick yellow leaves for me, she replied that "She hated when she was supposed to do this task!" Her friends all thought her strange for wanting to spend so much time with flowers, but she had a very keen interest in these flowers. I reminded her "but where are those friends now? And your flowers still live on in our gardens." Dawn never formally joined the American Hibiscus Society because her membership was part of the Conrad family membership, but she managed to become one of the youngest judges ever in 1986 at the age of 15.

I have already mentioned her winning HOTY twice. I asked her for a funny Harry Goulding story, and she had a great one to tell. At her height of hybridizing, she was competing with the greats in Florida, including Harry and also Joe Ludick. She was a smart girl and wanted to know everything about hybridizing by learning everything she could from the best. Dawn often sat down with Harry to pick his brain by asking a bunch of questions about hibiscus, but she said Harry would never give her a straight answer. Instead his circumlocution would be more of no answer than any response. When Dawn started to win, Harry Goulding suggested she should "Go to college!" In fact, at the Venice show, Harry strongly suggested that she "Go to college in Alaska!" The late great Harry Goulding must have considered this young girl a veritable threat to his work.

Dawn married Scott Shew in December 1992, and they have two children. Rory, is eight years old and loves to help his mother in the garden. He has a flower named after him called Rory Shew. Dallas Gray is six years old, and her grandpa named a flower in her honor, Dallas Gray. Motherhood has taken a lot of her time over the last few years. Her absence from hybridizing can be explained as simply the lack of time to devote to this passion. Raising a family, working full time, and fixing up their home takes all of her time.  Dawn went to work in the insurance field in 1993 after Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida. She is a licensed customer service agent for a small independent firm. Her sister, Amber Suzanne, now works with her. Scott, her husband, is a certified mechanic for Kelly Tractor Company. Dawn only has time for one hobby, and that is gardening. For the last eight years, she and Scott have been remodeling their home, and this is the project that has consumed most of her spare time. Every time they get ready to do one task, it develops into three more.

In 1992-93, Dawn served as president of the Sunrise Chapter and served as show director on several occasions. She was judging at a young age and felt it was important to be fair in evaluation if her flower came up to her table. She would withhold comment when her flower was being judged and left its fate to the other judges. 

When I mentioned her flowers by name, Dawn would say, "That is a blast from the past!" I feel her flowers are timeless and like a well-tailored dress are never out of date. Some of Dawn's creations can inspire a haute couture to make fabulous ball gowns of fabric in the same shades as her flowers. Each of these beauties makes a subtle statement: Afterglow, Amber Suzanne, Erika Nicole, Dixie Delight, Eye Opener, Heaven Sent, Holy Smoke, Ivory Coast, Joyce Conrad, Nettie Mae, Salazar, Salsa, Santana, Southern Comfort, Status Symbol, Sure Fire, Sweetheart, Trademark, Wild Thing, and Yellow Fever.  Her father named Pink Dawn in her honor.

Dawn has an uncanny sense at what her parents use in hybridizing. Her experience has made her aware of the importance of inherited characteristics from three generations. These characteristics will determine what you get. But she replied in a Forrest Gump sort of way, "You never know what you are going to get!" But when you hybridize you are working with three generations and not just two flowers.  If you ask Dawn what her favorite all time cv is, she will reply with Harry Goulding's Harvest Moon. She thinks it is great to hybridize with. Dawn says that it is recessive in color and truly lets the seedling pick up many possibilities from a rainbow of colors. Dawn believes that taking great flowers and doing back crosses to some of the garden varieties has great possibilities to ensure vitality and great bushes. But she considers her Amber Suzanne one of her best seedlings ever.

Dawn says she has always felt hibiscus belonged in pots and do much better in them, but she admits her Amber Suzanne could never be limited to a pot. Dawn expressed the desire to go back into hybridizing. She really misses this feeling of creating such beautiful flowers. She liked my descriptions of gems of many colors and agrees it fits hibiscus well. She used to have a great list of names for her creations and said that the name has "got to fit" the flower. She focused on "quality not quantity" and is going to ask Pete for partial "custody" to his plants.

Well, I’m sure we all hope she comes back to hybridizing and gives us blooms to thrill our hearts. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I wish her a speedy return.

The mysterious flower genie needed a distinctive mark to seal a missive to the Emperor of a far away land.  She searched in her enchanted garden for the right gem of many colors to seal this scroll.  She wanted to let the Emperor know of her powers with the gems of many colors in a powerful way.  Through the rows of gems, she searched for just the right one to say with understated grace, “Here is a missive for you to read.”  In the same vein, she wanted the Emperor, who was just learning of her special gems, that here indeed were the colors of the universe.  The Genie finally found a gem that combined the allure of red and royal purple with the reflected beauty of the gems.  She picked this special gem and sealed the scroll and sent it on its way in a chariot of mist and golden sunlight.

From the chronicles of the mysterious flower genie from the peninsula of flowers – Trademark.

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