Our History

Anuhea Flowers was established in early 1994 when Bill Mertens leased fifteen acres in beautiful upcountry Maui, Hawaii from a ranching family with a large acreage who were anxious to diversify from just cattle and give Bill a chance to grow the flowers in a new environment and to insure a future agricultural environment for their land. Bill chose Kings, Pin 24’s, Safari Sunset, Pink Ice, and May Days as his initial crops, and it was quickly evident they would flourish. In the ensuing years, he has diversified into about 25 different varieties of protea, and he is a major supplier of protea from Hawaii, shipping both retail flowers in our gift boxes, and wholesale flower shipments to many major US mainland cities. Anuhea Flowers can supply wholesale protea shipments to companies, large and small, as well as individuals with a large order. Contact us for a price list. Our first major harvest took place in 1996 with 195,000 stems harvested that year. In 1999, we were one of the larger producers of Hawaiian protea.

In those years, we supplied major wholesalers on Maui, harvesting our thousands of flowers on Sunday, bringing them into the packing shed, grading, counting them into groups, and loading up our trucks to deliver them to various locations in upcountry Maui on Sunday evening. It made for a very long day. Today, Anuhea Flowers ships directly to mainland wholesalers, thus an easier Sunday but a very busy Monday morning when most of these shipments are packed and leave our farm by 11:00 a.m. with a FedEx courier.