For the past 10 years, the two weeks before Christmas have seen Lyn and Ron Hussey at action stations.
The couple have a huge patch of Christmas lilies in their productive and well-ordered Wanganui East garden.
They have been selling the flowers from their garage since Saturday, and sent 7000 stems of lilies to flower auctions in the Hutt Valley the week before.
The scent from their patch wafts on to nearby Pauls Rd.
Mr Hussey is the former manager of Wanganui's Westpac bank, and Mrs Hussey has been a teacher at Kaitoke and Castlecliff schools. They moved to Wanganui in 1984 and are both now retired. Both of them enjoy growing plants.
Their lilies have a family connection that goes back two generations.
Mr Hussey dug about 500 bulbs from his father's Waipukurau garden and brought them to Wanganui in 1990. But the Waipukurau lilies actually started in Foxton, in his grandmother's garden.
He had no intention of selling the flowers when he moved them, but they multiply fast and there are now at least 15,000 bulbs.
"We ended up with all these flowers," he said.
The couple have been selling lilies each year since around 2000. Now it is gate sales of a bunch with 18-20 blooms and buds for $15. Women who arrange flowers for churches look for the longest-stemmed lilies and the Husseys are busy selling them right up to Christmas Eve.
They feed the bulbs with urea, blood and bone and potash, and spray the plants against fungus. Every six to eight years, the bulbs have to be dug up and divided or they get too crowded.
Last year a light frost in early November blitzed the blooms. This year the flowers are the best ever - perhaps because the bulbs had a rest and built up strength.