In 1889, Samuel Damon, a son of missionaries and prominent business man and politician, brought the first anthurium plants from London to Hawaii to adorn his family’s estate. Over time, anthuriums started growing in people’s yards at plantation camps.
Old-timers would jokingly say that his gardeners would “five-finger-discount” some plants. But history has shown that Damon was a very generous person and probably gifted plants to them. Enterprising people would go to plantation camps to buy these flowers from families to resell. People saw that growing flowers was a way to earn extra money, and soon a cottage industry was born.
That was 130 years ago, and little did Damon know then that those plants would blossom into a full-fledged agricultural industry. In 2017, Hawaii flower and landscape farmers generated $77.6 million in sales — and at its peak in 2007, before the great recession, sales were at $107 million.
Unfortunately, the $13.3 million in losses from this year’s lava devastation in lower Puna on Hawaii island will be a major setback that will take a few years to recover from.
The Hawaii Floriculture and Nursery Association (HFNA) represents over 300 members statewide. They are all small family-run operations and they provide jobs in rural communities, like Kapoho in the Puna district. More than half of our floriculture revenue is in export and primarily to the U.S. mainland, which brings in valuable outside dollars into our local economy. And when we send our flowers abroad, we are sharing a symbol of Hawaii’s beauty and hospitality.
HFNA also contributes funding and in-kind services to research institutions like the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) and the Daniel K. Inouye Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center (PBARC) . Our industry has been a partner with CTAHR’s research and development program of over half a century.
The program has developed numerous new flower varieties through cross-breeding that have garnered international awards. Some of these UH varieties are not only beautiful, they are also disease tolerant. These flowers, unique to Hawaii, provide our industry with a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.
We also contribute to a scholarship endowment to “grow” young people within the UH system as part of a holistic approach to our industry’s future. This is a great private and public partnership model that is working to benefit the entire state.
Over the past decade, we have “sharpened” our marketing to target floral designers who service the higher-end of the wedding and event markets. We’ve established relationships with renowned international, U.S. mainland and local designers or “influencers” to optimize social media exposure for our flowers. We have also created a floral design workshop that brought researchers from CTAHR and PBARC together with our designer partners. The researchers gained valuable insight to what our target customers, the high-end designers, are looking for in flowers.
We have seen demand steadily grow over the years. Our primary objective now is to get our farmers who lost everything back on their feet so they, too, can supply that growing demand.
Federal, state and county government representatives have all offered their support and are working diligently on our behalf. We have secured some federal funding, but we have a long way to go to bring our industry back along with the jobs and tax revenue we generate.
By being resilient, we continue to honor the legacy of Samuel Damon and those early pioneers of our industry. And with your support, we hope to be good community partners for generations to come.
Eric S. Tanouye is president of the Hawaii Floriculture and Nursery Association.
