Free to collect: 5,000 hydrangeas! But you had to have something to do with that. It was a traffic jam in Hoogerheide Saturday morning. Due to rising energy prices, the Meewisse nursery stops selling hydrangeas and therefore all plants have had to go forever.
In the parking lot, two laughing women load a Fiat Panda. “We brought plants all the way. We live at the bottom of the polder with seven houses. So we have a plant for everyone,” says one of them. Their car is swollen. Both the rear seat and the trunk are full. “But you can still drive. We have mirrors, right?”
Expensive time
Further on, a woman comes out with a plant in each hand. “It’s useless! And this in these expensive times. You have to take advantage of it, right ?!” It is a coming and going of people. “It started at nine, but if you already see what has already gone here!”
“When you see your company going to hell like that. It’s really bad,” he replies. “But today people also come to buy plants they wouldn’t normally be able to afford. One thing overrides the other.”
The price of gas is ten times higher
Yet the owner Antoon Meewisse lives it as a beautiful day. “Of course it’s a mixed feeling. But once it was good. We were already planning it, but with this energy crisis we couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
Assuming Anton continued to grow hydrangeas, he would have lost around € 75,000 in gasoline in January. “The price of gas has increased tenfold. Last year it was still 7,500 euros”.
“I expected this crowd, yes!” laughs a girl who drove from Bergen op Zoom to Hoogerheide with her mother. They carry “only” five hydrangeas with them. Humble, looking at all the fully loaded cars and trailers in the parking lot. “It’s a nice decoration for our garden,” says her mother.
End of an era
For twenty years the life of Antoon and his wife Bernadette was dominated by hydrangeas. More than half of the 5,000 plants have already been harvested at the end of the morning on Saturday. On Saturday evening the couple is left with an empty greenhouse.
“So we conclude a period of flower growth,” says a sober Antoon. “First we were among the roses, then among the hydrangeas. Now we are moving on to private gardens. We are embarking on a new path, which is part of doing business”.
