Dutch peonies with a story
Walking into the greenhouse of the peony farm, we see fields of beautiful, bright green peony plants as far as the eye can see. Among the crop it rustles. A cheeky chicken pokes its head out. The secret of peony lovers and suppliers Ton and Jolanda van Eijk against pests and weeds in their peony crop. And in a way that is good for the environment as well as for the wallet!
Special peony suppliers
“We have about 45 of those ladies running around,” Ton says enthusiastically. “They are leghorns, which is an active breed of chicken. They walk, dig and scratch a lot,” he continues. Thanks to his winged friends, herbicides and pesticides are unnecessary. The chickens weed out the weeds and eat the moth caterpillars, which normally destroy an entire peony crop in no time. A nice bonus is that with the sale of the eggs these “ladies” lay – about 300 per year per chicken – they provide for their own expenses.
About the peony nursery
Chickens cluck in the background as peony grower Ton shows us around his greenhouse in Noordwijkerhout. Meanwhile, his wife Jolanda hand-picks the flowers. “By removing the topmost twigs and leaves, all the energy goes to the bud,” she explains. That produces large, well-filled and sturdy peonies .
Dutch Peony’s peony farm consists of a greenhouse and an outdoor field, together nearly 3 acres in size. In total, the enthusiastic couple grows 15 peony varieties. From the exclusive Command Performance to the beautiful Sarah Bernhardt and Ton’s personal favorite: Angel Cheeks.
Pink, lilac, salmon, red, purple and white – the most beautiful colors of peonies are grown and cared for with love. That produces some 250,000 stems from the open ground in the spring, almost half of which go to buyer Greenflor. What makes this passionate duo so special is that they also manage to produce about 50,000 stems in September and October, exclusively for Greenflor.
Unique: peonies in the fall
After long testing, Ton and Jolanda have developed a unique, successful method for autumn peonies from Dutch soil in their forcing facility. Thanks to clever tricks and optimized logistics, the production of their peonies now continues in September and October. Because this method was developed in cooperation with Greenflor founder Cees de Mooij and his son Alain, these autumn peonies go exclusively to importer Greenflor. “In this way we can offer florists, wholesalers, garden centers and liners at home and abroad beautiful peony varieties like Alertie, Sarah Bernhardt and Duchesse de Nemours even in autumn. Something they are only too happy to take advantage of!”, says Greenflor director Alain de Mooij when we speak to him about this unique collaboration.
“We always give bloom guarantee, your customers are our customers. If something is wrong, report it to me. I’d rather have our customers come back angry than stay away cranky! But in practice that happens at most once a year.”
– Ton van Eijk, Peonies
