1st of January, 2026
Please take note, exports are restricted to within Europe only !!
3rd of January, 2026
Please take note, exports are restricted to within Europe only !!
Dear customers and lily-mates,
you have had to wait a long time for a new list. The flooding in September 2024 also affected our laboratory, which caused significant delays. By now, all damage has been repaired and the sterile filters replaced. Because our sterile cultures are kept on shelving, most of them were fortunately spared by the floodwaters. Still, wading through a sterile laboratory in rubber boots was a strange experience—one we had never encountered before.
Over the coming days, the webshop will be gradually restocked. And yes, with this we are announcing one of our final plant lists. As we already anticipated at the very beginning of our work, there would one day be an end to our work with lilies.
Looking back, there has been an immense amount of work, and also a great deal of support—through seed material and lily bulbs—from all over the world. In recent years, we were able to give much of this back to you. The distribution of lilies to North America, Asia, South Africa, and within Europe went very well and brought us great joy. Somehow, we even managed the Brexit challenges for our friends in the UK, flying over several times to deliver orders directly, as exports had become increasingly difficult. For a long time, there was hope that export regulations would improve. The opposite happened.
Not only do seed imports now also require a phytosanitary certificate for us, but Vienna Airport destroyed nearly all of our exports to Asia and North America in autumn 2024—despite the fact that, as you know, all our overseas exports are accompanied by valid phytosanitary certificates. We have not been able to resolve this issue to this day. This is also because major postal and shipping services, in accordance with (new) regulations, refuse to transport living plant material.
We therefore took time to calmly consider how to deal with these more restrictive conditions—for us and for you. The result is that we will initiate the third phase of our lily propagation work for you and for species conservation somewhat earlier than originally planned. Over the past months, we have not only repaired the damage in our laboratory, but also reactivated contacts that we had established years ago—in wise anticipation.
Although the original plan—to send the tissue cultures, the very heart of our work, in equal parts to North America, Asia, and within Europe—can now only be partially implemented, resulting in a somewhat imperfect solution, the first steps have been taken. A portion of the tissue cultures has already safely arrived in Japan by ship-freight from Genoa last October, and we are very grateful for the organization of this transfer. Within Europe as well, a new location has been found for our tissue cultures in cooperation with a foundation. A laboratory will be established there where our work will continue. How and in what form—we do not wish to anticipate that yet—but it is deeply reassuring.
Our laboratory will remain a laboratory in the future; at some point, a new plant family will certainly move in. Before that, however, we are granting ourselves a few years of rest, think I, knowing God´s plans are often different. We were fortunate never to have had to make a living from plants—this was always a very intense hobby, a passion.
Thus, this will be one of the last lists we publish. The webshop will be filled step by step over the coming days; orders can already be placed now.
We thank you for your loyalty and for your love of lilies. What would our work be without you—those who continue what we have prepared? Once again, it has shown that plants can also connect people. Friendships have grown that will continue beyond lilies.
Matthias, Gabriele & Este