Plant in full coastal sun or light shade with seasonally or year-round moist soil. Tolerates near coastal conditions, summer drought, wet conditions and winter cold. It can freeze back with a frost but quickly recovers and is suitable to a dry garden as it persists as a summer dormant plant in cool coastal gardens without supplemental irrigation but is also useful in well-irrigated gardens or along the edge of a pond where it can remain more evergreen. It can also grow as a foliage plant in deep shade where it likely will not bloom as much. Flowers and leaves are excellent for use in arrangement that lasts a long time when cut and submerged in water. Though animals eat this plant and African indigenous people have boiled and eaten plant parts, all parts of this plant are considered poisonous because they contain microscopic, sharp calcium oxalate crystals.

Plant in full coastal sun or light shade with seasonally or year-round moist soil. Tolerates near coastal conditions, summer drought, wet conditions and winter cold. It can freeze back with a frost but quickly recovers and is suitable to a dry garden as it persists as a summer dormant plant in cool coastal gardens without supplemental irrigation but is also useful in well-irrigated gardens or along the edge of a pond where it can remain more evergreen. It can also grow as a foliage plant in deep shade where it likely will not bloom as much. Flowers and leaves are excellent for use in arrangement that lasts a long time when cut and submerged in water. Though animals eat this plant and African indigenous people have boiled and eaten plant parts, all parts of this plant are considered poisonous because they contain microscopic, sharp calcium oxalate crystals.

For more information on this species see our listing for Zantedeschia aethiopica. The 'White Giant' selection first came to us in 2007 from Tony Avent of Plant Delights nursery who noted that he got it at the San Francisco of Sonny Garcia, where he noted the flowers reached above his head. Tony later told us that Sean Hogan of Cistus Nursery told him that this plant was a seedling plant that he selected while he was the University of California, Berkeley, Botanic Garden where he curated the South African, New Zealand, Australian, New World Desert and the California Native Cultivar Gardens from the mid-1980's to the mid-1990s however, there had previously been an introduction of a plant called Zantedeschia aethiopica 'White Giant' from before 1914 by a N. de Bruyn. Confusing the issue further, in the late 1980s we received a very similar plant called Zantedeschia aethiopica 'Hercules'. We received this plant from garden designer Eric Nagelmann, who had purchased it at Western Hills Nursery in Occidental, California. There is some thought that these two plants, 'White Giant' and 'Hercules' are the same clone and adding even more to muddle up this story is that some seedling plants lacking white spots in their leaves were also grown using the name 'Hercules'. Though we still have our original 'Hercules with spotted leaves in the garden, we never produced it in the nursery but started growing and selling 'White Giant' in 2006 when it became available to us in plugs supplied to us by Shady Oaks Nursery in Michigan from their micropropagation (tissue culture) laboratory. We discontinued producing it in 2013 when Shady Oaks Nursery closed but fortunately it was picked up by another tissue culture lab and so we were able to add it back into production in 2017 and continue to grow it to this day. 

The information about Zantedeschia aethiopica 'White Giant' displayed on this web page is based on our research conducted in the nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also include observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share cultural information that would aid others in growing this plant.