Aad The Cymbidium Orchid Grower, To Know Him is to Love Him!

Aad is an aquired taste, a little like Cymbidium Orchids, as it happens I thought he was brilliant, a real character, he's one of those people much like my own late father who truly believes that the world revolves around flowers, actually in Aad's case the world revolves around the Cymbidium Orchid!
This nursery is on a ginormous scale with Orchids in various stages of developement
Aad does actually speak English though not to us of course, so he showed us rather like a mime artist how the stems are hooked up to wires above to ensure they grow straight.


When they are picked they are hung upside down to prevent them from being crushed




Hans aka "Mr Cool" from Metz was our translator I suspect he chose his words carefully as Aad didn't seem to be in good humour or perhaps he's just not keen on people in his greenhouses with the Orchids.





You can see here the lines connecting to new buds pulling them upwards




I love this green orchid she looks so proud




The orchids are all sleeved and boxed very carefully by hand before being transported to Metz for distribution to the florist on the same day.

You see I thought Aad didn't like me but I must have been wrong, he gave me a gift you see a miniature Orchid box complete with a pen so I can write him love letters......

Visit to Cultra in Aalsmeer

We visited Cultra to do a little Christmas buying and to enjoy some of their inspirational designs, how fabulous are these exquisite cut Cyclamen








There's so much to see and so little time, the camera had to be put away so I could get down to some work!

Part 4. Visit to Fleura in Aalsmeer, Holland Trip October 2010

Super Cool Hans introduced us to the team at Fleura, Metz and Fleura have merged this year creating a more dynamic overall service for the Metz customers, Fleura are primatily know for their huge Cash & Carry business across Europe, they have a massive presence at all of the major auctions.

As I've already described in earlier postings, Metz purchases it's flowers directly from growers which can limit the varieties available, conversley Fleura buys directly from all of the main auctions including Aalsmeer with a clear directive to buy at least a minimum number of stems of every single variety that passes through the auction, the result is of course maximum variety and absolute freshness for us the customer and our clients in turn.

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Gerrit Groot chatting here with Jason is the Export Manager for Fleura, he'll be visiting us in the New Year, yet again on our trip Jason & I found a sincere willingness to learn and improve the service by seeing what we do and what our needs are.

These are the Fleura buyers buying on line, linked directly with the clock They were trialling various varieties of Curcumas and Chrysanths for vase life
Raymond van der Steen one of the sales team at Fleura gave us a guided tour of their enormous operation


Foliages taller than Hans, which we have been searching for over the past year, miraculously Raymond found us a phenominal supplier of exactly what we wanted


Raymond was excellent at tracking down the flowers and foliages we want to buy, many thanks to him for his patience and time spent with us, we really appreciate it.