Frosts cut Daffodil Day stock

Jo Matthews, Daffodil Day co-ordinator for Tauranga with fresh daffodils for Tauranga businesses in the lead-up to Daffodil Day this week. Photo / George Novak

Thousands of daffodils earmarked for Bay of Plenty businesses supporting the New Zealand Cancer Society have been killed off by recent frosts.

The situation has left the charity scrambling to fill orders placed in advance by businesses as part of the group's annual fundraising campaign.

Daffodil Day is the Cancer Society's biggest fundraiser and will be held on Friday.

Pre-sold fresh bunches of daffodils were expected to be delivered to Tauranga businesses today and tomorrow as part of the appeal.

While most businesses will receive their orders on time, others might be delayed until later in the week.

Cancer Society Waikato/Bay of Plenty communications manager Maria Low said it was diverting as many of the harvested bunches of daffodils to Tauranga as possible but at last count was still about 590 orders short.

Staff from Waikato-based Clandon Daffodils, which grows the flowers for the charity, will travel to Auckland this week to purchase as many daffodils as possible to replace those lost to frost.

"But we still have to bring them over, and bunch them and deliver them."

Ms Lowe said she was confident they would be able to deliver all the orders but it was possible there would be some delays.

Last week the Bay of Plenty Times reported how the Cancer Society was overwhelmed with people offering to help deliver flowers, after a shortage of volunteer drivers available in Tauranga.

With that issue now solved, the shortage of daffodils had kept the charity especially busy, Ms Low said. Last year, the charity supplied more than 1600 fresh daffodils to local businesses and was expecting to deliver about 1800 this year.

In Rotorua, the daffodil supply is threatening to be short by 768 orders. "At the end of the day, we can get the volunteers and the people power, but we can't control the weather," Ms Low said.

"We genuinely want to thank all the Tauranga businesses who supported our pre-sale, and apologise to those who won't receive their daffodils until after Daffodil Day.

"Even though the timing of deliveries isn't going to be ideal, their purchase of fresh daffodils still goes towards helping people with cancer and we're very grateful."