Cultivating Easter lilies can be tricky endeavor

For a week or two in the spring, the traditional white Easter lily is the most coveted flower of the season as a symbol of rebirth and purity, and to Christians, the resurrection of their savior.

Unfortunately, Hawaii gardeners won’t be able to resurrect the fragrant, trumpet-like flowers if they transplant them in their gardens. It’s very difficult to get them to bloom again the following year because our climate isn’t cold enough.

The process of timing the blooms of the lily (Lilium longiflorum) to peak at Easter is painstaking and, thus, a deal-breaker for most local nurseries. The plant’s normal blooming season is actually during the summer, and with such a short period of demand in the spring, few nurseries will go to the trouble of refrigerating the bulbs for several weeks to force the blooms to grow in time for the holiday.

Pang’s Nursery in Kaneohe was one of the few nurseries that grew them before owner Keri Pang decided to stop offering them in 2017, she said.

“Easter lilies are just a very hard plant to grow in general, especially in ­Hawaii, where the labor is expensive and it’s very hot. Because Easter changes ­every year (occurring in March or April), it’s hard to time when it’s going to be ready. Also, there’s such a small window that people really want the Easter lilies, and after that most people aren’t real interested in buying it.” Another challenge: The flowers last only a week.

She lost a lot of money on the crop and often ended up throwing batches away, so she decided to switch over to growing Asiatic lilies, a different species, which come in a variety of colors. Whether they bloom early or late, people will still buy those anyway, beyond Easter, Pang said.

People who try regrowing their Easter lily in their gardens after the flowers die won’t have much luck: “In Hawaii, it might re-grow, but because it doesn’t have that freezing period the bud won’t get developed, and it will probably never bloom again,” she said. Of course, these gardeners could dig up the bulbs from the ground or pot and refrigerate them. And those living in cold climates like Kula, Maui, or Waimea on the Big Island would have more luck.

(Howard’s Nursery on Maui, a prolific grower of lilies for Easter Seals fundraisers several years ago, is no longer serving the public.)

Pang’s father, Everett Pang, who started the nursery in 1970 and is now retired, used to buy the bulbs from the mainland and refrigerate them himself. When Keri Pang took over the operation in 2006, she switched to bringing in pre-chilled bulbs, as she does now with the Asiatic lilies.

Alluvion, Inc., a wholesale nursery and florist in Haleiwa, seems to be the only local grower of Easter lilies on Oahu to supply popular garden centers (such as Home Depot, Lowe’s, Koolau Farmers Cooperative and City Mill, among other locations). Other stores order their stock from mainland growers.

Alluvion manager/owner Chad Matsushima, who has been growing lilies for several years, agreed with Pang that Easter lilies are a risky crop. It’s more challenging with an even shorter window of blooming than poinsettias, his main crop, which also requires careful timing to meet the Christmas demand.

When COVID-19 lockdowns hit Hawaii in 2020, closing most churches and forcing a number of retailers to cancel orders, Alluvion ended up giving away some of its crop to hospitals, Matsushima said. Last year, he only provided 500, but this February, he’s ordered a conservative number (2,400) of seedlings from the mainland.

Matsushima has side-stepped the chilling process by ordering 2,400 bulbs already started in pots with 2 to 4 inches of growth, which he’ll cultivate to bloom in time for Easter.

When the weather gets too warm, he refrigerates the plants in batches for up to seven days if they start blooming too soon, or if the flowers start to spoil and turn yellow. He had to deal with overly warm conditions a few years ago — “It was a nightmare, we lost a lot of the batch,” he said, since customers don’t buy lilies until a week before Easter at the earliest.

Because the flowers last only about a week, the nursery carefully removes the pollen to extend the life of the blooms and to keep them white, he said. Once at home, lilies should be kept near a window to be exposed to indirect light, and should not be allowed to sit in water or to dry out.

(Warning: Lilies are toxic to children and pets, according to the University of Hawaii’s agricultural extension service.)

Is there a gardening topic you’d like to read about in the Garden Variety column? Email Pat Gee at pgee@staradvertiser.com with your request.