Breeding plants has always been Reinier van Elderen's idea of fun.  

The son of a vegetable farmer, as a small boy he was intrigued by the way he could cross 'brown beans' to produce beans with a huge array of different colours and even patterns.  

Always curious as to what makes plants work, he planted some Viola seeds given to him by his father, and couldn't resist examining them every day to check on their process. Even though he had been told that germination of Violas takes 10 days, Reinier didn't accept it until he had checked for himself - the seed of a revolutionary plant breeder had been sewn.  

Reinier persued his curiosity academically by studying at an agricultural college, so that by the time he was 19, his father was already keen to hand over the reins of the family business!  

Reinier and his father share curiosity of some seedpods in the family garden.

Coinciding with a location move to Lijnden - nearby Amsterdam, in The Netherlands - Reinier got busy with growing Paeonias for the cutflower trade and Aquilegia plants for a nearby mail order company. This was back in 1981, and since then the repetoire of plants has diversified considerably.  

In 1992 the mutated Hosta 'Elegans' that became Hosta 'Golden Meadows' was discovered, and this resurrected Reinier's interest in breeding.  

On a day to day basis, production of plants and cutflowers is what keeps the money coming in, but as time progresses Reinier is rearranging the workload so that he can devote more attention to his real passion, the breeding of new varieties.

And that's where the fun starts...

Reinier is never happier than when he knows his plant-growing associates and neighbours are saying "What's Reinier, that fool, up to now". He is determined to create plants that other people either haven't thought of or have dismissed as impossible.

This has already brought rewards in the form of a selection of Dahlias that can be grown inside a greenhouse - a previously absurd suggestion which paid dividends in cutflower production. Other growers were quick to jump on the bandwagon!

Reinier shows us his collection of Paeonia seedlings.

His worse nightmare would be to join the treadmill of the cutflower rose producer, who can only wake up each day to the same routine and ever increasing commercial pressures. Instead, he follows the path of adventure, knowing that as well as keeping him happy, this is also an investment in the future as his own discoveries can earn money independent of the mass market trends.

Most importantly though is that plant breeding should be fun. And for Reinier that means experimenting with ideas that others find rediculous, including the crossing of genera. His mission is to pit the technical knowledge obtained at agricultural school against his rebellious streak, to produce truly special results - if the resulting plants aren't special enough he simply discards them! When he begins a project it is never half-heartedly, believing firmly that if you're going to do something you may as well do it well, or not at all.

Developing new varieties is a lengthy process - typically 7 years - but despite his impatience to see what's happening in a plant, Reinier knows that it's better to get started on that 7 year road than not to explore it at all. And he can get lots of projects on the go which will reap a succession of exciting discoveries.

So what exactly is Reinier getting up to?

Apart from an extensive Paeonia breeding program, he appears to have crossed a Lilium with a Gloriosa, and is working to create a red-flowered Sandersonia aurantiaca. He is hugely excited about what his experiments will result in, but as the winter approaches he, like the rest of us, can only sit and wait to see what emerges next spring...........

For more about Reinier van Elderen's work, go to his home pages