Ida Drapkin; ‘Fuchsia Lady’ Filled Her Life With Her Favorite Blossom

Ida Drapkin, the amateur horticulturist who called herself the Fuchsia Lady, has died.

Drapkin died of lymphoma Wednesday at her home in Rancho Palos Verdes. She was 78.

She was fanatical about the fuchsia plant--the bush with exotically hued blossoms that dangle like lanterns. Images of her obsession covered her wallpaper and bedding, filled her closets and picture frames and decorated her china and hand-embroidered pillows. Her license plates read FUCHSIA.

But the best display bloomed in her glorious backyard, which once boasted 3,000 fuchsia plants, many of them her own hybrids.

Drapkin first encountered the fuchsia in 1970 and went on to produce more than 30 hybrids. Her success brought her national and international recognition and led her to adopt the name Fuchsia Lady.

She named one hybrid Ida’s Delight, after herself. Others were named for fellow fuchsia enthusiasts, family members and a favorite doctor. One variety was named Sidney, after her husband of 57 years. She had fuchsias so much on her mind that when someone asked where Sid was, she often replied, “He’s in the backyard, hanging out.”

In recent months, as ill health overtook her, it became easier to find likenesses of her favorite flower inside her house than the real thing budding in her garden. That fuchsias have faded in popularity and suffered a plague of mites distressed the effervescent Drapkin, whose death came near the end of the flower’s blooming season.

“She wanted everybody to learn about fuchsias and grow them and enjoy. She wanted you to enjoy them,” said Pam Hantgin, who once ran a fuchsia nursery.

Drapkin was an Army wife who grew all sorts of plants in all kinds of places--mangoes in Hawaii, daffodils in Germany, cucumbers in Niagara Falls. In the barren plains of El Paso, she said, she grew sand.

Eventually, Sid (the husband) retired and the couple moved to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. That’s where Drapkin spied her first fuchsia.

Years later, she could not really explain why she felt an instant attachment she felt to the plants. Once she said it was their intense color, better than that of azaleas or camellias. Other times she just shrugged, “Why not?”

“Something about it,” she told the Times recently, “just hit me.”

Finding Rancho Palos Verdes’ coastal climate ideal for the plant, she started experimenting. It did not take long to develop her first hybrid, named South Coast after the South Coast Botanic Garden near her home. She attended fuchsia conventions, traveling to England and Australia to get samples for hybridizing. She belonged to eight fuchsia societies. Eventually, she became president of the National Fuchsia Society, founded the South Coast chapter and taught classes on fuchsia culture.

Although most people think of the fuchsia as a denizen of the hanging basket, Drapkin believed that there were hundreds of ways to grow them.

Over the years, she cultivated 1,000 varieties in her backyard, from ground cover to tree-size fuchsia. She even made fuchsia into the miniatures known as bonsai.

She hand-watered and groomed her plants, a labor that consumed most of the week. She was a firm believer in filtered sunlight and a little elbow room for each one.

She didn’t just talk to her plants. “I yell at them,” she once said.

She printed fuchsia-colored business cards and began a small business selling plants and fuchsia-inspired merchandise, including her own line of clothing. She got mail from around the world, asking her advice on growing fuchsias. Visitors from as far away as South Africa who had only read about her came knocking on Drapkin’s door.

If they didn’t know how to find her, they just asked for the Fuchsia Lady.

“I got mail from all over from people wanting information from her,” said Norma Cantafio, executive director of the South Coast Botanic Garden Foundation.

Thanks to Drapkin’s efforts, the horticulture center now has an area devoted to fuchsias. It will be named the Ida Drapkin Fuchsia Garden.

Drapkin is survived by her husband; two daughters, Marsha and Ellen; two sisters; a brother; and a granddaughter.

Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to the South Coast Botanic Garden Foundation for the Drapkin Fuchsia Garden, 26300 Crenshaw Blvd., Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274.