The long journey of a bulb: from Holland to your gardens!

As you may know, Floramama's guiding principle has always been to move away from what is too common in floristry. This is why we strictly favor "specialty" or "fancy" tulip varieties, often with double or fringed petals and, above all, soft colors. The same goes for all the varieties of flower bulbs that we offer during the autumn bulb sale. We have decided to favor certain varieties in particular because they have incredible flowering compared to the more common varieties which have simple flowers and, often, quite bright colors. That said, it is quite an art to obtain them!

Did you know that the production and supply of bulbs, and especially specialty tulips, is almost entirely monopolized by Holland?

Why not buy from Canadian bulb growers? Simply because they don't offer varieties we like. Only varieties with simple petals and somewhat questionable colors are available.

Indeed, to be able to offer you a funky and refined selection of quality bulbs, we must go through Dutch suppliers/producers located in Canada, who also sometimes work with different Dutch producers themselves to acquire certain varieties. All this makes the planning process for our bulb sale complex and requires a lot of patience.

So the excitement is at its peak as we finally open the online store for pre-sale!
And it is even more so when we receive our first bulb orders at the farm!

Planning

March-April: This is the crucial phase of evaluating last year's sales. Every year, despite constantly adding more available quantities, several varieties unfortunately run out of stock in the first few days of the pre-sale opening. We must therefore evaluate the desired quantities for the next sale and let our intuition run wild for the new products we want to add.

Will our new, sometimes funkier, releases be as much a hit with you as they were with us? Will we be able to get our hands on enough of these famous varieties that everyone is eagerly awaiting?

The orders

April-May: we begin placing our orders with our suppliers, 6 months before the first bulb shipments from Holland to the farm.

Much like a list to Santa, we make our "wishes" to our various suppliers to ensure we can offer you our favorites, but also more breathtaking new products! To do this, we often have to juggle with three or four different suppliers. From there, they confirm what they think they can obtain and in what quantity, or offer us replacements for varieties that, unfortunately, cannot be obtained (often due to insufficient bulb harvests due to difficult weather conditions at the growers).

Reception at the farm

Once our wish list is converted into actual orders, and the available varieties and quantities are confirmed, excitement builds at the prospect of seeing these floral treasures soon come to life in your gardens. However, we must deal with the unexpected production challenges before these precious bulbs reach our doorstep.

Unfortunately, for several seasons now, Europe, like many places on the planet, has been experiencing climate extremes that have disastrous consequences for bulb cultivation. As the months go by, we receive updates regarding our orders.

So, keep in mind that we are NEVER sure of what we will receive until the bulbs are in our hands. Sometimes, we are not even informed of the shortages and we only realize it when we receive the bulbs.

We don't yet have the precious bulbs in hand when we put them up for pre-sale on our online store. That's why we're holding a pre-sale and not a bulb sale.

We do this because the market is like that. Garden centers and supermarkets receive their bulbs earlier than we do, and we would be missing the boat if we waited until we received the bulbs to open the sale.
Believe us, if we could do otherwise and receive the bulbs earlier in order to make a sale and not a pre-sale, we would do it!!!

Additionally, working with living things means dealing with quality issues, which are sometimes only discovered upon receipt. We therefore inspect each bulb meticulously, applying high quality standards.

Slice of life: Last year, all our Dreamtouch bulbs arrived moldy (a fungal disease), which is why we were unable to supply them, even though the pre-sale had already started as planned. When this happens, it's a huge disappointment for us, but we also think of you who are waiting impatiently. Although it's quite rare that we can't fulfill orders, in these cases, we offer a replacement with a similar variety.

In addition to all these variables mentioned, delivery dates can also fluctuate. For example, we may receive a first order of bulbs from our suppliers on September 20th and subsequent orders can go as late as October 15th! It is important to know that your orders are only shipped once all items are received at the farm first, which explains the waiting time between an order for bulbs placed on our online store and its delivery. However, as soon as we receive the bulbs from our suppliers, your orders are prepared and sent very quickly.

Each bulb is carefully bagged, one by one, for a final quality check. This is our commitment to bringing you stunning flowers. The bulb pre-sale is a time of year we love! It's an adventure filled with suspense, twists, and turns, but also excitement and joy!

We hope that this sharing will bring transparency to our bulb pre-sale processes, as it is important to us.

Set the world on flower!