Gardening and Landscaping Mission to the Netherlands Part Two…The Nurseries

Earlier this week I shared some images of the Villa Augustus hotel.  But today I want to share some photos of some of the fabulous nurseries we visited whilst we were there.  Most of the images were taken on my phone so they’re not really up to scratch, but I hope you enjoy all the same…

The weather was a bit rubbish for both days of nursery visits so we were dodging a lot of showers, but each was impressive and really interesting.

We started at Boomkwekerij Ebben, the biggest tree nursery in Holland. We didn’t have nearly enough time to spend there but we took a quick tour by bus of the nearby fields where the majority of the nursery stock is grown.  The office building was really impressive too with fabulous facilities for the staff including a roof terrace and private bar!

Our next stop took us to Quick Hedge, an instant hedging company.  As we stepped off the bus the heavens opened, but it was great to see the stock including a Christmas Tree hedge which is grown specifically to survive the Russian climate. The hedges here are planted and maintained using GPS – amazing!

One of the most inspiring things I saw on the whole trip was the office building at Van den Berk nursery (below).  The trees were of course impressive too, but as we sat in the conference room for a quick introduction, it started to rain and the water came off the roof and trickled into the pool below.  I didn’t get a picture unfortunately but it was really mesmerising, like being behind a gentle waterfall.

Van den Berk also have a specialist Rhododendron nursery in Germany – look at this amazing specimen which will set you back several thousand Euros.

Like Ebben Nursery, they too grow large mature specimen trees.  Each is transplanted every few years to ensure that they can be lifted ready for delivery at any point in time.

What really struck me about all the nurseries was that they were absolutely immaculate, not a weed in site, it was really impressive especially considering the size and quantity of stock many of them had.

We saw a really good mix of shrub and tree nurseries, specialist perennial nurseries and also Jub Bulbs which was really interesting – I had no idea how bulbs are grown and processed.

On Day 3 we spent time in the East of Holland and all the images below were taken on that day.  What we all found hard to get our heads around was the fact that we were standing 3 metres below sea level!

I was quite surprised that so much of the plant stock was grown in the field, even at the perennial nurseries.  It makes a lot of sense to me so I wonder why we don’t do the same in the UK.  Pests such as rabbits and deer would definitely be more of an issue here I think (without the canals surrounding the fields), but growing in this way must make for less issues with pots drying out and plants becoming suffocated in their pots.

I had no idea either that at this time of year it’s possible to buy bare root perennials.

A truly inspiring and interesting time at all the nurseries we visited whether they were small and a little quirky or the biggest in Holland.  Thank you for having us!

(images: Lisa Cox)