Earl Tesca
Rochester, Minnesota

Earl was one of the charter members of the North Star Lily Society and was elected its first president. He lived in Rochester and maintained a garden plot out in the country. He enjoyed raising and hybridizing lilies for pleasure. He kept meticulous records of his work with lilies and the journal is now a part of the Cocker library. His breeding interest was on the early Asiatics, which he felt had the greatest potential for northern gardens.

Earl moved his collection of lilies to the Cocker farm after the flood of 1978. His yard had 3’9” of water. Hugh Cocker told a story of Earl having installed a new appliance in the basement and to avoid getting it ruined, lifted it onto a table, thinking that would be enough to keep it dry. The next morning he went to check on the basement to find the water up to the landing at the top of the stairs. Everything, including the new appliance, was under water.

Earl died in 1979, leaving his lilies and wealth of information to Hugh and Ruth Cocker.

Hugh Cocker remembers Earl Tesca: 

"When the North Star Lily society started, a lot of members were interested in hybridizing lilies. The one I knew best was Earl Tesca. He is the reason we are in lilies. When we got to know him, he was retired from the postal service. He was working with Asiatic, Trumpet, Aurelian and Oriental lilies. He also grew species from seed. This was before the North American Lily Society’s seed exchange. The early growers swapped seed and pollen through the mail. Earl never registered any of his lilies. We registered some for him and so did Merv Eisel.   'Honey Crème' and 'Earl’s Red' were two of Earl Tesca’s hybrids."