Greetings from the Netherlands,the cut flower capitol of the world
Ya girl got to go to the Netherlands with Farmer Bailey— here are some of my highlights
We spent one week in the Netherlands—touring breeding & growing facilities; seed processing, packaging & distribution supply chains; the world’s largest floriculture trade shows; and Royal FloraHolland’s premier floral auction.
Even as someone in the industry who (in theory) knew how monumental the cut flower industry is, seeing all of this in person just puts into perspective all of that for me. We as small scale cut flower growers in the US are but a small piece in this global supply chain puzzle.
Yet even though there are some massive producer of cut flowers out there and small scale growers are but a drop in the bucket, we benefit immensely from all the breeding and innovation they are doing behind the scenes. Farmer Bailey’s team really has their finger on the pulse when it comes to connecting what these massive industries are doing to us smaller growers here in the states.
Here are some of the places we toured:
Kolster—breeder and producer of ornamental woodies specifically for cut production; we just bought a TON of ilex and snow/coral berry from them!
Danziger—ornamental flower breeder and young plant producer; all of our scoop scabiosa comes from these guys!
HilverdaFlorist—breeder of gerbera, limonium, dianthus, and alstroemeria
Lugt Lisianthus—growers of lisianthus (primarily from Sakata seed); they grow 60 million lisianthus over 6 successions annually
Celosia by Feiko—growers of celosia
Takii—seed production; this facility was all about seed cleaning, sorting, and processing
Evanthia—ornamental flower breeders and seed production
International Floriculture Trade Fair & Royal FloraHolland Trade Fair
Royal FloraHolland auction
Left: conveyor belts taking harvested lisianthus to be packaged at Lugt Lisanthus Middle: coral berry at Kolster’s breeding farm Right: displayed ilex for Kolster’s booth at the IFTF trade show
Above: getting ready for a tour of HilverdaFlorist, breeder of gerbera, limonium, dianthus, and alstroemeria
Above: behind the scenes look at the Royal FloraHolland auction, the largest building in Europe and ninth largest in the world (it’s bigger than the entire country of Monaco). Our tour of roughly 1km was only about 10% of the entire complex. They move on average 43 million flowers daily. Amsterdam is truly built on the cut flower industry—most of the semis you see driving around are filled with flowers from this auction.
Above: celosia ready to be harvested at Celosia by Feiko
There was group of 50 of us on this trip from all over the United States.
It was so fun to hang out with other growers from around the country. Honestly this was my favorite part of the trip—getting to meet internet friends and growers I’ve admired from afar in real life!
Here Northerly Flora and I are with Callah from Tiny Acre and Maggie from Delight Flower Farm at Onings Booth at the IFTF. Onings is where most of our spring bulbs come from as well our Colibri Icelandic poppy seed, peony bareroots, and ranunculus corms.