When close to 10,000 flower bulbs are donated to West Chester parks, the Borough takes notice and took the opportunity to recognize this extraordinary contribution to the community on Friday at Borough Hall, writes Adam Farence for the Daily Local News
The event was to thank the efforts of Dutch Grown, the Dutch flower bulb distributor that has helped make West Goshen Park, Everhart Park, and Marshall Square Park even more beautiful. During the ceremony, Mayor Carolyn Comitta, together with other officials, presented Ben Rotteveel on behalf of himself and his brother, Peter, who was not able to attend, with awards including the keys to the city, saying “thank you to both of you for being keys to our beautiful future.”
The two brothers continued four generations of family tradition in the flower bulb industry when they started Dutch Grown, which now delivers millions of flower bulbs across the globe, including to the Vatican in Rome. However, when founding the company they decided to give it their own twist.
In an effort to reduce the long wait after an order is placed due to the lengthy shipping times from the Netherlands, the brothers decided to ship the bulbs to their West Chester climate controlled warehouse from where they can directly fill customers’ orders.
“They don’t want to wait for more than a week for what they buy,” commented Rotteveel. “They never complain about quality; most complaints are about the wait time.”
Usually the wait time is so long because the flower bulbs are first shipped to New York from the Netherlands by sea and then delivered by truck to their final destination. Opening a warehouse in the U.S. takes out at least two weeks out of the usual wait time as the orders are now filled in the same time zone, as opposed to from across the Atlantic.
We decided to do it this way as “we’re supplying the American gardener,” Rotteveel said.
