
Garden Writers
Amsterdam Belgium 2006
July, 2006
Tuesday July 4th was Our Day with Darwin
Plants. Our first stop this morning was to the home of Marco van Noort, This
was a surprise visit for the group and even more of a surprise was the fact
that there was a film crew there filming Marco for an upcoming episode on
Recreating Eden. He chatted with us and toured us through his display and
test beds all the while we were being filmed. From Recreating Eden “Nursery
owner Marco van Noort is a true Renaissance gardener, drawing upon
traditional methods at a time when Holland’s billion-dollar flower business
relies heavily on high tech. Van Noort uses bees for cross-pollination, and
the result is award-winning perennial hybrids: proof positive that nature
cannot be replaced.” Our next stop was the private garden of Dick Maas. Dick
is the owner of a large perennials production nursery, and an avid plant
collector. Many of the varieties he has gathered over the years have been
artistically incorporated by his wife into the beautiful garden surrounding
their house. Dick will be on hand to explain with great enthusiasm the story
behind each of the varieties on show! The dwarf Verbascum 'Braveheart',
introduced in 2006 was discovered in Scotland by Dick Maas and has now been
renamed to Verbascum ‘Flower of Scotland’. There are two pictures of it
here… We then visited a production nursery owned by Kees van der Aardweg.
This production nursery supplies many perennial varieties to Darwin Plants,
and others. A number of new introductions and future possibilities are to be
seen here. Following lunch we visited Kebra Perennials Production Nursery.
Kebra are entrusted by Darwin Plants to nurture many varieties through from
the very smallest plug stage to field-grown plants ready to export to
nurseries in Canada and the USA (and the rest of the world!) This is an
opportunity to see some of the processes that plants have to go through as
they are produced, and gain an appreciation of the amount of work that goes
into supplying plants to the trade. Many new varieties and future
possibilities are to be seen here. Campanula 'Purple Sensation' and
Euphorbia 'Mini Martini' were discovered by Mark van Kesteren at Kebra
Nursery.
We finally end up back at Darwin Plants. They were delighted to announce
that Darwin Plants had been granted a Royal Warrant as nurserymen to Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth. (UK) This is given in recognition of Darwin Plants
having been chosen to supply plants directly to the Royal Household for the
past 5 years. Darwin Plants are the only Dutch company to be given this. We
enjoyed a great evening with a BBQ included and got to chat further with
Marco, Dick, the Darwin team and the film crew.
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