'When novelties are offered, we make plants out of them'

Ambitious Bloemen Young Plants is future-proof after expansion and modernization.

Bloemen Young Plants, formerly Kwekerij Maarten Bloemen, is not hiding its ambitions. The planting material supplier for growers, especially specialized in shrubs, is still on the rise. The nursery from Venhorst is making a fresh restart under the new, more international name. The company has been expanded and completely modernized to meet the increasing demand from all over Europe. Son Merijn has also stepped in. 'We are ready for the future with our distinctive high quality assortment, aligned with Europe's top tree nurseries,' exclaims Maarten Bloemen.

Since last summer, Kwekerij Maarten Bloemen has been renamed Bloemen Young Plants. 'Actually, we are making a new start with our company, now that my son Merijn is also co-owner. After some back and forth with experts, we decided to make a fresh start with a new company with a new name, new logo, new corporate identity et cetera. We chose to add "Young Plants" because we export almost all over Europe and continue to grow in it. That is why we have given it an international tint, so that it is immediately clear to everyone what we do: a company for plant reproduction materials. The ratio of domestic to foreign sales is about 60/40 percent. Sporadically we do business outside Europe, but the market within our continent remains the center of gravity. We have relationships with large, renowned growers, but also with smaller ones. They finish growing the plants, after which they go to garden centers and retail.

Nursery Maarten Bloemen of Venhorst was founded in 1987 and expanded by Maarten Bloemen and his wife Jacqueline Bloemen. They started with a very wide assortment. At that time, Bloemen still did a lot of breeding and grafting and the like. It couldn't be as crazy or the grower would make it. After ten years of working with a fairly extensive assortment, including end products, Bloemen switched completely to starting material in the field of acid-loving shrubs in 1997. The company turned itself into a planting material supplier for growers. And not without success, as Bloemen has grown considerably in this specialization over the past decades and is still on an upward trend today. The company has an acreage of 6.5 acres, with 2 acres of greenhouse, 1.5 acres of outdoor lava field and 2 acres for continued growth. Currently, Flowers produces 1.8 million plants annually, but with the current expansion it can grow to 2.5 million plants per year.

Focus on shrub
The focus is still on acid-loving shrubs, and for more than five years there has been an even wider range of these species. Recently, soft fruit has also been taken up on assignment, so not only the visual aspect of the plant. Furthermore, in addition to acid-loving shrubs, other, mainly protected shrub products have been started. If a grower is interested in making something new in the field of shrubs in Venhorst, it is possible. Much of the production is patented. This involves close cooperation with Plantipp, which works like a magnet on the nursery world. Starting material is flown in from all over the world, which Bloemen puts to the test. Maarten Bloemen: 'Because we have a large sales area and cooperate with many growers, we can always find a market for any new shrub product.'

With the relaunch, the acreage also expanded and investments were made in new construction. 'We are completing the new building, which is adjacent to the old company. One hectare of new greenhouse was recently completed and a small hectare of lava field was added. A new water storage facility and a large new hall with processing area and loading docks have also been completed.'
According to Maarten, this expansion was more than badly needed. 'The market is demanding a lot from us at the moment. We could not fill the orders we received on our own premises. We had been renting greenhouses and pot fields off-site for years. We got completely tired of that. True, we are very grateful to the companies that made the growing space available to us, but that growing remotely is very labor-intensive. We wanted to get rid of that. With the investment now in completion, our company has grown almost three times its original size.'
Flowers uses one pot size, of 9.5 inches. 'We are very tight on sizing and they know us for that. We always deliver that 9.5-centimeter pot in top quality. At least, that's what people say about us.

Ready for the future
With the renewal and expansion, Bloemen is completely ready for the future. 'If you look at how the market has developed so far, we want to continue to meet the wishes of Europe's top nurserymen with our distinctive assortment and high quality. We don't have to become the biggest, but want to grow with our customers on assignment. Whether that is a visual product or soft fruit does not really matter. What the customer asks, we fill in. That's why we doubled in production in a few years. So the restart with all those investments we did consciously for Merijn's future and to keep our company on the map. We want to complete the growing process together with our partner companies as meticulously as possible, so that the customer keeps coming back and gets the best quality.'

Green is in, and with today's knowledge, Martin expects it to stay that way. 'Although things are a little tougher for consumers' wallets at the moment, we have the expectation that we can keep running at the current high level. We haven't had a surplus for years and that will most likely not change. We are a modern company and completely up-to-date in terms of installation, water and environmental technology and automation.'
When building the new company, everything was scrutinized. Not only in terms of the latest technological developments, but also current and future regulations. 'So we call it future-proof, because it really is a company that has been ticked off by controlling bodies as "perfectly in order". That's also how we want to come out. We also meet the latest sustainability requirements with LED lighting, climate and water levels. With the current staffing of fourteen people, we can still grow production by several percent through modernization.

Apprentice
Merijn Bloemen has gradually grown into his father's business. 'I started helping on Saturdays over ten years ago, alongside a job in engineering. But the Saturdays became half-weeks, after which at some point I switched completely to the nursery. After having had a stake in the old business for a while, I became co-owner of Flowers Young Plants as of July this year. I have continued to develop in the nursery profession within the business. My father was my tutor and I have also had guidance from Dorus Rijkers management partners and some cultivation consultants. We are also members of the business association Garden Plant Collective and I learn a lot from that. This club includes many top nurseries from the south of the country; we are happy to be part of it.'

Among other things, Merijn envisions the business with new impetus in marketing. 'We've come to realize that these days it's not just "make a plant" and then business will flow naturally. We have to think more commercially than before. We are fully committed to that. We are quite active on social media and online marketplaces like Varb and Floriday, so we are seen as a business.'
Bloemen typically test a wide arsenal of species. 'Traditionally, we have been known for acid-loving plants, such as Rhododendron, Pieris and Leucothoe. But we are still ahead within this stock with new varieties. Almost everyone as a grower knows us from this. Since Plantipp has seen that Flowers can make more than acid-loving products, we have a mega-wash list of new species. That includes everything from such Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and American species as the Rhododendron Encore. The reblooming new line was created here in Venhorst, after the cuttings were flown in from the US. It's too much to mention, but we can breed a very wide range of shrubs. Actually, it's whatever: if novelties are offered, we make plants out of them. Not everything breaks through, but if the plants turn out to be good, we can put away an interesting number pretty quickly. If we can work with a thousand or five per variety, a multiple of that is soon achieved at our nursery. We can scale up efficiently.'

Sarcococca
Bloemen is intensively engaged in the production of new patented varieties. With Sarcococca, for example, Bloemen says it is perhaps the largest batch in Europe. 'We have some top products in the protected world of Sarcococca, such as the "Winter Gem" and the "Purple Gem". Meanwhile, the number of the "Winter Gem" is heading toward one hundred thousand. The "Purple Gem," which is only a few years old, is already at just under fifty thousand. We have no problem getting successful species deposited. Our preference is for species that we can put away widely in Europe. But we also don't shy away from sporadically propagating exclusive niche products. Recently we received a cart of plants from Portugal, for which we made starting material. The plants are treated separately with soil heating and LED lights above them. In this way we satisfied another customer. We don't pick up mass products like Ilex or Buxus, but we do pick up a common shrub species that we and our customers see a market in.'

Vergeldt & Bouten Boomkwekers: ten years of fine cooperation with Bloemen
Vergeldt & Bouten Boomkwekers has been working with Maarten Bloemen for about ten years. The Lottum-based nursery specializes in pot-grown fruit and small fruit plants in various sizes. 'Bloemen makes planned numbers of half-products for us. These plants are intended for cultivation in larger pot sizes. We give orders a year in advance, depending on the market,' says Twan Bouten of Vergeldt and Bouten Boomkwekers. He is full of praise for the quality of the starting material supplied. 'Maarten Bloemen is a true professional, one with green fingers, and he can read a plant. At Bloemen's, the young plants are in lava container fields. The advantages of this are: a healthy root system and the plants emerge nicely evenly in the spring without any stunted growth.'
Bouten names a highlight he has brought to market with starting material from Bloemen. 'Vaccinium vitis-idea is a sensitive crop. If you want to be successful with this plant, you will have to start with clean material. Maarten Bloemen manages to make a picture of it every year.'

Click here for the original article (in dutch).