Ronald Moerings from Boskoop regularly delivered aquatic plants to some of his uncle’s customers. His uncle grew them as a hobby. The local garden centres were crazy about the muddy plants, but then they were placed somewhere in a corner in the shops. Young Ronald was surprised by this and thought of a plan.

Presentation

If the plants were attractively presented, then consumers were almost certainly going to be keener to buy them. Meanwhile, his uncle had to stop his small-scale growing business. Ronald took over the aquatic plants and the customers from his uncle and started his very first nursery. He made sure that the customers now received cleaned up plants provided with an elegant coloured label. These were the very first steps of R. Moerings Aquatic Plant Nursery BV.

A new location

The original nursery in Boskoop was on a peaty soil that was subsiding, and there was not really any space to expand. Ronald and his wife Fiona decided to search for a large, single plot of land elsewhere in the country where he could grow his business with enough space for future expansion. They found it in 1997 in Roosendaal in the Brabant province, near the A58 motorway. They built a completely new glasshouse complex here, with an advanced ebb and flow system, so that the aquatic plants could be grown under ideal conditions. These were the first steps to becoming Europe’s largest aquatic plant nursery.