Garden plants and their hunters – Walter Blom

In 2001, after 5 generations of predominantly Dutch bulb cultivation, the Blom family stopped growing flower bulbs to concentrate on their export market. The founder and great-great-grandfather of the current Director Paul Blom, was Walter Blom who started his apprenticeship in the bulb industry in Holland over a century and a half ago. Today it is still a family owned and operated business with nurseries in England, Holland and the United States. In an odd reversal of fortune, the Bloms are now moving back to their roots as plant hunters, reducing the amount of bulb-growing that takes place in their Dutch bulbfields in favour of locating new and unusual bulbs in the farthest corners of the world.

Thirty-five years ago, Japan was a protected market and any bulb that was shipped to, or from, the country had to be planted in a quarantine bed for year to ensure it had no transmittable diseases – but the relationship between the Dutch bulb house and Blom’s had been established much earlier and allowed the firm to survive the difficulties. The Bloms had actually grown their first tulips in Japan in 1919 which they at the Ohta Flower auction in Tokyo.

Since then, the Japanese bulb has become a trading centre valued at 200 million dollars a year and Bloms Bulbs are among the ten top exporters. Now the Bloms are looking to a new market for bulb-hunting ...China.

Tulip photograph by petursey, used under a creative commons attribution licence

Plant Hunters