Hold this for me, please
Who makes all these spray roses that travel the world? Yes, our entire collection grows in a far, far away corner of the Dutch lowlands. On just a few quiet acres below our humble crystal palace. But the floricultural community nurturing those plants? They're from all over the map.
On any given morning at Voorn, you'll meet a global community at work. We come from Dutch, English, Portuguese, Polish, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Farsi, and Arabic-speaking cultures, but we work, talk, and grow together as one.
We are all different, but it works. Perhaps it's the spray roses. Polluting the air with their universal language of peace and unity. Or perhaps it's simply because we’ve found the exact right all-in-one mix where everyone feels welcome.
Depending on the season, between 25 and 50 people work across our greenhouses and processing and packaging facilities. Some have been with us for nearly two decades. Others joined more recently, bringing new languages, perspectives and stories into the mix. Together, they keep more than thirty spray rose varieties moving through the greenhouse seven days a week.
How to read a rose
A rose is a demanding creature. It requires you to read its habitat, signals & cues and understand the rhythm. You have to anticipate the timing and read its language. Essentially, you need to answer its call before it even opens its mouth to speak. Which, you will find, it is firmly reluctant to do.
It is a high-stakes sprint involving hundreds of passionate people, from logistics experts to elite florists
This is a skill as much as it is an intuition. One that is passed down every day, from veteran growers to seasonal workers, from long-term team members to local students.
That mix in our workforce is something we genuinely enjoy. Alongside our international team, local young people join us during weekends and holidays. They help with the more basic tasks at first, but they also learn something bigger: responsibility, teamwork and the rhythm of a working greenhouse. Learning to show up on time. Learning that quality matters. Learning that every task, no matter how small, contributes to the final result.
Depending on the season, between 25 and 50 people work across our greenhouses and processing facilities. While the team expands during the busy growing season, a core group remains year-round. Several colleagues have been with Voorn for more than a decade, and one team member has been helping grow our roses since 2006.
The tasks at hand
Most new team members begin with a task called disbudding. Roses can be a enthusiasts. Every stem naturally produces more buds than it can support, so choices have to be made. Which buds stay? Which ones go? Sounds simple, but those decisions determine the quality of the flower weeks later.
As experience grows, so does responsibility. They learn how to guide the plant through the growing process, how to bend the crop to create the ideal structure for future growth, and how every action affects the next stage. Roses are not grown through a series of separate tasks. Everything is connected.
Over time, some people develop what we call “the eye”. The ability to read a plant almost instinctively. The exact angle of a cut. The strength of a rising shoot. The precise moment a bloom is ready to be harvested, and the crucial moment it is not.
The work starts early. On a typical day, the greenhouse comes to life at 6:30 in the morning. Roses are harvested seven days a week, and while weekends focus mainly on essential tasks such as harvesting and sorting, the rhythm of the crop never really stops. Plants continue to grow. Flowers continue to develop. Nature doesn’t take weekends off, and neither do we.
Harvesting, sorting and grading require the same level of attention. A stem that is cut too early, too late or at the wrong height can affect future production. Every bunch is checked for stem length, bud count, uniformity and presentation before it leaves the greenhouse.
At Voorn, quality isn’t one job. It’s hundreds of small decisions, made correctly, by dozens of people, every single day.
Growing roses is a team sport
The story doesn’t end when the trucks pull out of Luttelgeest. The magic of our ecosystem is that the loop never actually closes. The roses grown by a team representing half a dozen cultures in a tiny Dutch village, travel across borders, climates, and time zones through a complicated, closed cold chain at incredible speed.
It is a high-stakes sprint involving hundreds of passionate people, from logistics experts to elite florists. All because you need to say you’re 'sorry' and 'I love you' and you know nothing says it better than a bunch of VOORN spray roses.
To the last pair of hands to hold our roses: we hope you enjoy them. Through our roses we believe you'll feel connected to the global community that raised them. The power of love and what not. Just watch those thorns though.
