AGRICULTURE

In Bloom and In Demand

How the peony industry is growing to serve global markets

By Vanessa Orr

Though peonies have been growing in Alaska since the Gold Rush, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that raising the flowers became a commercial industry. Since then, peony growers have worked diligently to develop both national and international markets for the flowers based not only on the quality of their products but on the fact that peonies are available in Alaska when they can’t be found anywhere else.

“In the Lower 48, peonies bloom around Memorial Day, so they are available in May and June,” explains Ron Illingworth of North Pole Peonies. “Our

peonies in the Interior pop out of the ground in late May and are harvested in late June and early July; in some parts of the state, they may be delayed even further. And because our flowers are available when no one else has them, we get a better price.”

“As long as the weather cooperates, we can produce flowers at a time when the Lower 48 and European supply is not available,” adds Martha Lojewski, sales manager at the Alaska Peony Cooperative, based out of Willow. “This year, things are really late, and we shipped as a co-op through August 24 and heard that others were even shipping in September, though this is not typical.”

Alaska peony growers work with a number of different markets, ranging from individual clients to wholesale purchasers. They also ship all over the nation and the world and are working to expand those markets as the burgeoning industry grows.

“Most of the peonies grown in Alaska are actually sold elsewhere; if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that 90 percent of them leave the state,” says Illingworth. “They may go to individual brides who contact growers or to florists who contact us directly or who work with us through buyers. Even more are sold wholesale.”

Boreal Peonies, located in Two Rivers, sells wholesale to markets in New York, Maryland, Washington, Florida, and Washington, DC. Owner David Russell and his wife, Jill, both teach at Miami University in Ohio part of the year, offering them a familiarity to the area.

“Our presence is largely based on the availability of Alaska Air Cargo coolers,” explains Russell, who also serves as president of the Alaska Peony Growers Association. “When we first started our farm, we looked at cities east of the Mississippi that had coolers at their airports and we marketed to them. That way we can fly our flowers directly from the Alaska Air Cargo cooler at the Fairbanks Airport to airports where the flowers can be stored for client pick-up.” Boreal Peonies also sells to Marks & Spencer in London through an intermediary company.

Shipping fresh flowers can be a logistical nightmare, and it has been made even worse by the pandemic. www.akbizmag.com

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“We still sold out; we sell out every single year. We shifted our marketing plan and had several backup plans, and we also adjusted our financial plans to sell everything—just differently. We had to get a lot more creative.”

Martha Lojewski, Sales Manager Alaska Peony Cooperative

Add to this the difficulties in keeping plants healthy before and during harvest, keeping them at the proper temperature during transport, and getting enough employees to help— and there are a lot of things that can go wrong.

“The Alaska peony industry has been publicized really well, but at times it’s been over-glorified,” says Lojewski. “So many people think you just plant a $3 root and grow a $6 stem, and then sell them until the cows come home, but that’s not the reality.

“There are really long days of harvest on weeks of no sleep and torrential downpours. There are significant risks to mature plants each winter, which can devastate a farm financially since it can take four years before they can harvest a new root. Then there’s the heartbreak when a box of perfect white flowers doesn’t make it to a bride’s wedding,” she adds.

“We put our first roots in the ground in 2013, and it was the driest year on record—like planting on the Sahara,” says Russell. “The next year was the first or second wettest year on record. The third year was full of forest fires.

North Pole Peonies was founded by Ron and Marji Illingworth in 2003 and is located 15 miles outside North Pole.

“It’s been a truly Alaskan experience and I’ve loved every minute of it,” he continues, adding that Boreal Peonies now has somewhere north of 20,000 roots in the ground. “But there’s no doubt that there are a lot of challenges.”

From Field to Final Destination

Just as with any plant, peonies need to be protected from pests and disease. Keeping the flowers free of fungal disease, especially botrytis, is always a challenge.

“We spray the field before we harvest because this in-the-ground fungus is everywhere—you can’t get away from it,” says Illingworth. “Some of us also use ozone to treat the flowers periodically while they’re in the cooler to kill botrytis and bugs.

“You try to be as careful as possible, but when you put new flowers in the chiller, you can track in botrytis just from walking through the grass,” he adds. “And this is just one potential failure point.”

While Alaskan farmers are committed to keeping flowers chilled to the proper temperature after

“When you have a large venue, you go for lower-cost flowers, so since people were doing smaller events, they chose to spend the extra money they saved on the more expensive flowers they really wanted—peonies. We sold our entire crop two to three weeks earlier than expected… They’re being sold as fast as we can grow them.”

Ron Illingworth, Owner, North Pole Peonies

harvest—roughly 33°F to 34°F with high humidity—they have no way of guaranteeing cold chain management.

“This is the weak link in the floral industry,” says Illingworth, adding that his farm normally ships by FedEx next-day air or with Alaska Air Cargo. “The product is shipped with gel packs frozen in shipping boxes, but they warm during the process.”

With the pandemic, growers are finding that there are fewer flights and fewer trucks on the road, limiting delivery options. “The whole transportation industry is still recovering from COVID, and it’s got a ways to go,” says Illingworth.

The Alaska Peony Cooperative sells out of stems every year, and this year was no exception despite having to deal with issues relating to the pandemic.

Alaska Peony Cooperative

One of the advantages of growing peonies in Alaska is that they come out of the ground later, making them available to national and international markets when no other growers have them.

“We wanted to hire fifteen people this year, and barely got half that. The last two weeks of harvest, we were working 100-hour-plus weeks. So this winter, we’re going to need to spend as much time marketing our farm to prospective employees as we spend marketing our product to the Lower 48.”

David Russell Owner Boreal Peonies

Growers are also seeing a backlog at airports and seeing storage facilities stressed to the limit, resulting in increased product loss.

“We shipped to Austin, Texas a few days ago, and the flowers got stuck in Dallas-Fort Worth,” says Illingworth. “They got to the client and a few had already opened, which wasn’t too bad— I’ve seen a lot worse. They were still pleased, but it took about twelve hours longer to get to them than it should have in normal conditions.”

“While this is a PR problem for the transportation company, the monetary loss isn’t necessarily significant for them,” says Russell. “But for us—the grower that is impacted by flowers that didn’t get there for a wedding—it’s a big deal. It’s our reputation on the line.”

This past year, the Alaska Peony Cooperative made inroads into the Canadian market by creating a perishable alert program so that trade documents could be electronically uploaded for Customs to approve before packages arrived, decreasing inspection time.

Alaska Peony Cooperative

“The Alaska peony industry has been publicized really well, but at times it’s been over-glorified. So many people think you just plant a $3 root and grow a $6 stem, and then sell them until the cows come home, but that’s not the reality. There are really long days of harvest on weeks of no sleep, and torrential downpours. There are significant risks to mature plants each winter, which can devastate a farm financially since it can take four years before they can harvest a new root. Then there’s the heartbreak when a box of perfect white flowers doesn’t make it to a bride’s wedding.”

Martha Lojewski, Sales Manager Alaska Peony Cooperative

Like in many other industries, Alaska peony growers are also having trouble finding employees.

“We wanted to hire fifteen people this year and barely got half that,” says Russell. “The last two weeks of harvest, we were working 100-hour-plus weeks. So this winter we’re going to need to spend as much time marketing our farm to prospective employees as we spend marketing our product to the Lower 48.”

Having the proper equipment—from reefer trucks in the field to cold storage facilities throughout the state—can also make a difference in getting flowers to market. While a new cold storage facility is slated for construction at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, it’s only one step in the right direction.

“While the facility in Anchorage has a place going forward, we need a lot more cold storage in the state as well as discussions about who will run them,” says Russell. “Will it be private enterprises that buy our stems, or a co-op type arrangement where eight to ten farms store their stems there and collectively hire a facility manager? If I have 50,000 stems in a facility and the compressor goes out, who is responsible for that loss? It’s critical to have facilities, but it’s just as important to have a blueprint on how to make them successful.”

When dealing with a lot of stems, it’s also critical that farms have field chilling capacity, or reefer trucks, to allow the cut flowers to cool before being moved to a packhouse. “If you harvest peonies on an 87°F day and put them directly into a packhouse tote, you’re warming up all of the flowers already in there,” says Russell. “One of the problems that we’re facing as a fairly new industry is that we’re undercapitalized so we don’t have multiple chillers on multiple farms.”

He adds that this year there was only one reefer truck available in the state during harvest time. “All of them were being used for salmon, and when the truck we had previously scheduled cancelled, we had 100,000 stems at immediate risk with no field chilling,” says Russell. “While Lynden Transport was able to free up a 53-foot trailer to save us this time, there are another 200 growers in the state, some of whom easily exceed our capacity, who could also face this problem.”

Increased freight costs are also an issue, as is the US Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency’s Reimbursement Transportation Cost Program, which reimburses partial shipping costs for peony growers. “While it was put in place to help the industry, it has lost its steam and there is not enough money in the kitty to make it a viable program,” says Russell, adding that burdensome paperwork requirements also make it difficult for smaller farms to participate.

A Blooming Success

Despite all of these obstacles, the Alaska peony industry has still had a banner year.

“We still sold out; we sell out every single year,” says Lojewski, adding that this success didn’t happen without a lot of shuffling. “We shifted our marketing plan and had several backup plans, and we also adjusted our financial plans to sell everything—just differently. We had to get a lot more creative.”

The Alaska Peony Cooperative focused on markets in the Lower 48 and worked on improving its hold in the Canadian market, creating a perishable alert program so that trade documents could be electronically uploaded for Customs to approve before packages arrived, decreasing inspection time. The co-op also negotiated a new rate with a different transportation carrier than it had been using, with a better delivery result.

“The first part of the year, we ended up with a lot of cancellations, so we thought it would be a terrible season,” says Illingworth of how North Pole Peonies fared. “But then we started getting in orders for smaller events.

“When you have a large venue, you go for lower-cost flowers, so since people were doing smaller events, they chose to spend the extra money they saved on the more expensive flowers they really wanted— peonies,” he continues. “We sold our entire crop two to three weeks earlier than expected.

“The market is holding up really well, and though people are now able to do larger events, we haven’t seen any slowdown,” he adds. “They’re being sold as fast as we can grow them.”