Future Plants is an independent cooperative of hybridisers, propagators and growers who work together to introduce new plants to the trade. They offer services in propagation, growing and selling, as well as handling the administration that enables hybridisers to receive royalty payments.

Based in Lisserbroek, The Netherlands, Future Plants was formed in 1998, but its roots can be traced back to the late 1980’s.

The central character in the Future Plants story is Aad Zoet. He was a rose grower who, due to back problems, switched from the physical to the business side of the plant industry.

While working as a salesman for a major bulb export agency, it occurred to him that exporters could utilise the slack winter period by handling perennial roots. This idea took off with a number of businesses, and as demand for perennials increased so did the need to offer an increasing range of varieties.

Aad’s travels around Europe in the search for new perennials eventually brought him to Kew Gardens in London, where a dark-leaved Sedum caught his attention. On returning to The Netherlands he asked around about the variety, and his contacts eventually led him to Piet Oudolf, who was just beginning to make a name for himself as a garden designer and plant breeder around his home base in the east of The Netherlands.

Aad Zoet was already working closely with the grower Aad Geerlings, so together they travelled to Piet Oudolf’s nursery, where they were so taken with his Monarda ‘Beauty of Chobham’ that they offered him a royalty fee to grow and sell 5000 copies of it.  Subsequently, more and more of Piet’s creations were introduced on a commercial scale, including well-known varieties of Salvia, Geranium, Astrantia and others.

Aad had always championed the idea that hybridisers should be rewarded for the years of work they put into developing new varieties, and paying royalty fees for each copy sold was a fair system for doing so. The problem was that there was nothing to stop other people from making their own copies of the plants and distributing them without passing on royalty fees. It was clear that more control was needed and so Aad started to register new plants for patents under the official Plant Breeders Rights schemes both in Europe and the USA.

The final piece of the Future Plants jigsaw was completed in 1995, when Aad Geerlings’ brother met up with a hybridiser by the name of Herbert Oudshoorn at the cut flower auction in Aalsmeer. Impressed with Herbert’s offerings, Aad’s brother told him to contact Aad Zoet. As it turned out, as well as having some interesting new varieties, Herbert had an exceptional skill in propagating from cuttings, and the fact that he was a small-scale independent operator meant that he fitted in perfectly with Aad and Aad’s set-up for producing protected new varieties.

The Future Plants cooperative was established officially in 1998.

Aad Zoet sadly passed away in 2002 but his legacy lives on, with Future Plants now an established name amongst those within the plant export industry. Aad’s widow Joke remains a co-owner of the business and continues to be very much involved in its operation.