Drying isn't mandatory, but will greatly reduce the amount of hops you'll need in any recipe. Here's a good link (not my find, just passing it along) for a very basic dryer I plan on using for my first year Newports:
I am somewhat in the same boat in that I cannot find much information on my hop variety so I'll be following retrofit's advice (s.m.a.s.h.), with a malt I'll be using in at least two other recipes first, to get a handle on what exactly a Newport does.