An Amaryllis Tour
When I start talking about Amaryllises, I imagine most people think about our most popular products. One of those, a favourite of mine as well, is our Amaryllis wreath. The Amaryllis wreath is a collection of 5, 10, 15, or even 20 or more bulbs of different varieties. You could order all Amaryllis bulbs for yourself if you are a big fan, but I have also heard many stories over the years of people who use this method to gift all of their friends a different bulb. This is a guaranteed hit in the friend group: the Amaryllises will be a free topic of conversation for months to come.
There are always Amaryllises that surprise their new owners, and I promise those people will be happy to inform you about the progress of their new roommate.
Every year, I also do an Amaryllis tour to see all of the growers who provide Fluwel with their beautiful Amaryllis bulbs. I love knowing where the bulbs come from, though you won’t see a lot of flowers when visiting growers. Their focus is harvesting the best bulbs. Usually, they have one dedicated trial garden where they plant a few of every variety in order to really see every single flower.
The greenhouse of Amaryllis grower Peter van der Kaaij
The Amaryllis growers in the area I always visit have an agreement to plant their trial gardens in such a way that they are all in bloom at the same time. This is around the same time as the opening of the famous Keukenhof, which gives their (international) customers the opportunity to visit everyone in the same trip. That saves a lot of time for everyone who has to travel to The Netherlands, and it is also the most fun.
I always look forward to these visits, especially the ones to growers who also hybridise new varieties of Amaryllis. Peter, the owner of the garden pictured above, is one of those growers. He often produces stunning newcomers, and Time 2 Shine is an example of that. A couple of years ago, Peter had just one bulb of this variety, and she got the number PK46. When it was finally time to name her, and to sell the bulbs, I really wanted to be first in line. Now, you will be one of the first to get them via our Fluwel web shop!
This is the greenhouse of Arie and Kees van Velden, who are big growers of Amaryllis bulbs too. Not that their greenhouses are the largest, no, I’m talking about their physical appearance now. I visited them last year, and it strikes me every time, especially seeing them next to not-so-tall international friends.
I was looking for a photo to add for you, but that mostly reminded me of the fact that I also have to get to work on our Zantedeschia assortment. That is another specialty of the Van Velden brothers: they grow Zantedeschias in pots and sell lots and lots of them to gardening shops.
This is their greenhouse in the spring, full of pots with Zantedeschias to be. But I have to get back to the Amaryllises, before I tell you a different story entirely…
This is what the greenhouse looks like right now. Tens of thousands of Amaryllises ready to be shipped all over Europe.
This is how they are prepared for their journey. Chances are that the amaryllises you saw in the shops the other day started their lives over here. But apart from their hobby of potted Amaryllis bulbs, the main product Arie and Kees offer are the Amaryllis bulbs themselves. Their assortment is put together with great passion every single year. They have too many to name, but I want to highlight the cybister Amaryllises here: these are Amaryllis flowers with a bit of a different shape, their flowers are loose and playful and, obviously, beautiful.
Actually, these bulbs are not ‘different’ at all. They are actually much closer to the Amaryllises that grow in South America, where they originally come from. This variety, Red Amazone, is one of my personal favourites. Her colour is even more red in real life, the photo doesn’t do her justice. I wanted to tell you something about her, so I looked at the text I wrote for her on the website to see what I told you there, and I could obviously not choose what word to use for this Amaryllis: Seductive, exotic, fantastic, romantic—all words I used in the description. I have no idea how I come up with this sometimes, I can get inspiration from anywhere. Song lyrics are useful sometimes, and those are always dramatic, too, so that is a good match with me. But the description of Red Amazone is still true: This is a beautiful variety, she’s really got the look.
There are too many Amaryllises to count when they are all in bloom in the growers’ greenhouses, but right now, they are busy planting the ones for next year already—the flower bulb world just keeps on spinning.
Freshly cooked Amaryllis bulbs ready to be planted again.
Before the bulbs are planted, they are ‘cooked’. Not in the dinner-in-ten-minutes-way: they spend about an hour and a half at about 47 degrees Celsius. This is a way to kill annoying things like nematodes and micro-organisms no one wants in their greenhouses, and it gets the bulbs clean and ready to enter the soil again.
Right now, there aren’t any Amaryllises in bloom in the greenhouses, but there is coffee, often with cookies, too, so a visit is still a great time.
Time to get back to my own Amaryllises.
Kind regards,
Carlos van der Veek
