The colorful, ironclad mini gerberas at Van der Wilt Nursery.

A rainbow of delicious Gerberas and germinis

We imagine ourselves in a brightly colored sea of flowers when we walk into the 3-acre greenhouse, where 39 different varieties of germinis can be found. About 15 men walk around with arms full of colorful mini gerberas. Yellow, orange, red, purple and all sorts of shades of pink, cream and white. A true candy store!

Almost 50 years ago, Aad van der Wilt founded the nursery in Mijdrecht. His daughter Tessa shows us around. In addition to sales, she deals with administration, marketing and secretly also quite a bit of cart building. She talks enthusiastically about the different types of gerberas, the company, breeding and where the special names of the flowers come from.

Gerbera breeding full of love

According to Tessa, the perfect gerbera is a plant whose production is good, its color shines, its stem strong and its picking easy. “It has to stand well in the vase,” she says. So a combination of practical factors and high quality. It’s testing, testing and more testing, looking for the perfect gerbera plant that they dare the future with. And with which they can surprise customers. Something Tessa’s brother Joris has been passionately engaged in for 10 years. The nursery has even set up a separate nursery for this, where we see hundreds of new gerbera plants in all sizes sprouting almost live. A very special sight!

Fun facts about Van der Wilt Gerberas and germinis

Did you know that this nursery has 185,000 plants, a gerbera plant lasts about 3 years, an average of 16 to 22 flowers are picked per m2 per week, that produces about 115,000 stems per day, each has a stem 50 cm long and that all of this is done under 2,000 lights!