Dutch Lead the World’s Flower Trade and Place High in Buying and Giving

Romance blooms among the green-fingered Dutch, the world’s biggest sellers and buyers of flowers and plants.

The Netherlands accounts for nearly two-thirds of the world trade in cut flowers and over half of the world trade in potted plants. Last year, these exports earned the country more than $2 billion.

In 1987, the country produced 7.4 billion flowers and 615 million potted plants. But while they are highly pragmatic about growing and selling flowers, the Dutch are also distinctly romantic about buying and giving them as gifts.

“The Dutch are a model for everyone else. Every year we buy an average of 155 flowers per head of the population. Everyone should be so romantic,” Andre Mulder, managing director of the Netherlands largest cooperative flower and plant auction at Aalsmere, told Reuters in an interview.

According to Mulder, even the romantic Italians are less florally inclined, each buying an average of 74 flowers a year. Lower down the list come the West Germans, with 66 flowers per head, the British with 35 and the Japanese with 34. Way down the list are the Americans, who buy only 12 posies a year.

Mulder says that buying flowers is a fairly modern habit which has become popular only in the past 15 years.

Before that, people either grew their own or gave them only on special occasions. Now they are given for a much broader range of reasons, he says proudly, having spent most of his working life trying to get people to do just that.

He says flower-giving has much to do with disposable income but is also influenced by social habits and attitudes which, he adds happily, are steadily changing throughout the world.

“I expect that within the next 15 years India will become a major flower producer and consumer, and that exports of flowers to the Soviet Union will also blossom,” he said.

And he predicts that as urban Americans begin to spend more of their weekends at home rather than escaping to the countryside, they will notice the lack of flowers in their lives and start to buy them more often.

Mulder also says that demand for Dutch flowers has mysteriously risen since last October’s world stock market crash.

This, he suggests, is probably a result of consumers buying flowers as gifts instead of more expensive items bought previously.

Although the Netherlands is intimately connected in many minds with tulips, they are not, in fact, the main flower export.

The list is topped by roses, followed by chrysanthemums and then carnations. Tulips are fourth, followed by lilies and freesias.

Nevertheless the Dutch are very proud of their tulips. The national airline KLM uses the tulip as a motif and only this month a new tulip was named after one of the country’s most famous sons, footballer Johan Cruyff.

West Germany takes the most Dutch flowers and plants each year, followed by France, Britain and Italy. These four countries account for nearly three-quarters of Dutch exports.

But the Dutch are also interested in exporting outside Europe, with the United States and Canada high on the list.

Interest in potted plants is also on the increase. The reason, Mulder says, is a combination of economics and a growing recognition that having a plant in the home can be pleasant.

“If you want to express your feelings, you give flowers. If you want to improve your environment, you buy a plant,” he suggested.

Hotels and public buildings have started to realize that putting a couple of palms in the lobby not only looks better but is also considerably cheaper that expensive furniture.

And while a flower lasts perhaps a week, a plant generally costs less and lasts much longer.

However, Mulder also points out that boosting the Dutch flower-export industry has been an uphill struggle, and doing the same for plants would be a lot easier if countries eased stringent plant health regulations.

“The Americans are slowly beginning to relax import restrictions on pot plants, and matters in the European Community should be a lot easier after 1992, when all such matters are supposed to be harmonized,” Mulder said.