Home of our founder Millie Seagon, Gilgil would seem an unusual spot for growing high-end flowers. Often seen as a windswept, open dry landscape it has proved extremely successful for two of our favourite growers. As it turned out it was the perfect location for the products they grow!
“We started in the town of Gilgil with 1 hectare of cut hydrangeas, convinced that this location offered us the best growing conditions for this product. That went well, and the positive reactions from the market combined with our own enthusiasm soon prompted us to expand to 3 hectares. The range was supplemented with Limonium and Delphinium, and since then we have focused on these three products.”
One of our key values is that we will only work with growers with the same moral code as we have, which is one of sustainability and social responsibility. Blooming Africa and Africalla are two farms located here in Gilgil, who we work with, who share those values.
Blooming Africa grows with awareness, and caring for the people they work with and the environment they work in. It was founded in 2013 by Bert Kuyper and the farm is Global Gap certified and KFC Silver.
Africalla is a 30 hectare summer flower farm taken over by Geert and Emily Rooijakkers in 2015. They grow a variety of flowers but predominantly Phlox, Gypsophila and Kangaroo Paw. Other flowers come and go with the seasons such as Buplurem and Sunflowers, depending on demand from Europe.
By partnering with these two superb farms we are able to offer a much larger range of Summer flowers within our portfolio, supporting the farmers by providing a variety of different markets to sell their flowers.
With new markets for these flowers in the UK we hope very much to increase the volumes we sell of all these products but in particular the Solidago. This is all part of our desire to develop new products and varieties grown exclusively with our large group of growers, to extend the portfolio of flowers for our customers.
