Visiting the Ranunculus Breeders in France SO MUCH BEAUTY Flower Hill Farm

I'm tired and hungry. Good morning flower friends. It's Nicole from Flower Hill Farm and welcome to my hotel room in France. This is technically the second day that we're here but the first day that we're doing something. Yesterday was just recovery day. Traveling for 24 hours plus. It's a lot. So we are getting ready. We're having breakfast right now. I have my cappuccino and we are going to visit a breeder today. It's called Compteur Polonais. I will get the proper pronunciation of that but go to see some ranunculus in their breeding house and we are spending the entire day from nine to six with the owner. He's going to be showing us all the things so come along. Galena and I are going outside to gauge the temperature so we can choose our outfits for today. Okay it's not bad. Oh my. Okay I gotta spin the camera around right now. No big deal. How did we miss this yesterday? Yeah there's like satellites and wow that is ridiculous. Okay we're bringing a coat. I'm gonna keep my sweater on and um but we're going in greenhouses today so we might be sweating by the end of the day. That's true. All right I'm gonna actually get a couple of plant pictures. These are cool. I have no idea what these are. Oh we have those. It looks like these are gonna flower. Yeah. And then this thing is like a succulent on a stick. Like literally succulents on sticks. I'm sure there's a name. I don't know why I was thinking like I wasn't expecting to see these kind of trees in France but we are in southern France like Mediterranean style so this makes sense. This tree is so cool. Like a pinecone. Look how cute it is. Oh my gosh. Okay for those of you guys who are catching up, I was invited on a trip to Europe with a bunch of cut flower growers by one of my mentors, Dave Dowling. So there are 16 of us. We just landed in France and we're spending two days here and then we're going to Holland. So our first visit with Bernard from Comtois Polinois is a breeder for ranunculus and they're one of just a couple of ranunculus breeders in the entire world. So if you've ever grown or heard of an amandine ranunculus or a labelle ranunculus which is what the majority of us are growing, this is where it came from. He's showing us some of the and the seeds that they create from the ranunculus. The ranunculus does not really have the pollen available for the bees to do any cross pollinating. So any of the pollinating that ranunculus is done by hand by the breeders. So in this little bag here there were one and a half million seeds and now Bernard is taking us in the rooms where all of the pollinating happens. Is this for growing corms? No, no. Seeds. Seed production. Yeah. Okay, everybody inside. Close the door. Okay, you see here? You have pollen. This pollen can't be here. This is genetically impossible. The pollen doesn't move. No, no, no. Even if. It's impossible. Genetically it's impossible. And this one will not be possible to breed this one or this one or this one because this one is coming, all this line is coming from one corm. So this is the same corm, same genetics, just separated. Okay, so no possibility of cell breeding. Okay, this is very important. It means if we don't come, we have no seed. Now can that be also a father to a different one? Yeah. So that pollen could go somewhere else and pollinate. Can you take this father and mother and cross them with each other? Of course. Okay. It gives you the same thing or two different products? No, same thing. Collect again pollen three times from the same flower and then like he is doing, it will take off. I'm just going to walk around the greenhouse and show you guys some of the varieties that we were taking a look at. Some of these are varieties that we know and some of these are varieties that are new that they're trialing. Either way, they're all gorgeous. I'm literally so overwhelmed. Oh my gosh. It's so good. These are blowing our minds right now. They do look like kale coming up out of the middle or something. Would you work with that Ellen? Oh yeah. Our customers love that. They love anything weird, like anything that is not like get at the grocery store. It's crazy. There's my group way down there. I'm just off on my own taking pictures but I can hear the voices travel really well in here so I can hear everything they're saying. You can always hear Mima laughing. It's like pure green. Oh my gosh. Yellows. Look at this. Oh and I can't even tell you what the varieties are because they're just labeled by number. I can guess on a lot of these but I don't know and this is actually the breeding house so not all of these are released yet. Look at this one. It's like a pocote. That's like magenta. Yeah I'm gonna keep walking down this aisle right here. Holy guacamole. Hold on I gotta get the stem. Look at that. These are so stunning. This is I feel so what's the word lucky. I feel so lucky that I'm in the house right now where the varieties of ranunculus were literally born. This man and his family they're in the third generation of growing these and they're just breeding and making these varieties and so everything that we grow all started right here. It is so tight to walk in here. It's very narrow like maybe two 18 inches to two feet but I'm carrying camera gear and tripods. Look at this cluster of yellows. Look at that. I know they have the amandine gold which I gotta get. So amandine is actually named after his daughter so I want to have him tell me how to actually say it because some people say amandine some people say amandine. Look at that. Oh is that not the most perfect ranunculus. Look at the size guys. That is my hand. This is incredible. Oh wow. Excuse me. Excuse me. She has no business being so gorgeous. Um another another stunner. Oh I just love them all. I want more greenhouses. Just grow ranunculus and I'm learning so much about just how these were created and it gives me a more. Oh I got the door. No I'm getting out before Nikki. Nikki's got it. Oh look at this. I just love this gate. Like just the architecture. Oh and there's a mountain. Just some casual mountain. Casual. Oh my gosh. I have to catch up with the group. I don't know where they are. Oh here they are. You guys like look up. Casual mountains. Oh yeah. It's like rosemary. Oh my gosh. Oh is that a it must be a type of rosemary. Yeah it smells like it. I was thinking. Yeah. It's so good. All right we're going in a warehouse. A lot of walk-in coolers in here. Oh these look familiar. The boot. Okay we are exiting the building. Oh no. We're just turning the corner. Turning the corner. Oh another cooler. Oh all the orange. We are very important uh zone for peonies. We send a lot of peonies. We don't grow any peonies ourselves. We just supply peonies to the growers. Watch your step. This is our research glass house. We have four thousand breedings here. Each you can see with your eyes. Here there is one flower, one flower, one flower, one flower, one flower. Each each one with always same mama, papa. Okay. And these are from corms in here? No from sissies. You remember the ones you saw I told you it's only one corm. It was special colors. These were bred last year and these are the babies. We're all just like so in love. It's just an amazing sea of buds. This is like what you want to see. These are fun. Is it amandine or amandine? Amandine. Amandine. Okay good because I. I know I love that because I I never know what I'm gonna say and I okay amandine. You know almond? Yes. Almond. What is almond? The fruit? Yeah. This is a small almond. And that's your daughter's name? And this is my daughter's name. Is what is Labelle? Yeah. And Labelle is that named after anything? Oh okay. Because they were afraid it was a beginning they were afraid we were Dutch who would send to their customers so they changed their name. And after four or five years they understood so they now don't change their name. Are you going to name what about Sebastian? Are you going to have one? No no Sebastian. This is so you Bernard's your dad you're the next generation and you're you're coming into the coming into the business. Everyone's telling me I need to come down here and see this and I absolutely as I approach can see why. Hello gorgeous. Yep I'm not mad at that. So this is one that's not been released yet. Oh my goodness. How far away is this one from being released did he say? It's not. He's a good neighbor. He just sends them to his neighboring country. Like a good neighbor Bernard is there. No it doesn't it looks like almost like a um a Quebec. Yeah and that's another one they took in the Canadian. Yeah. Okay so um see it here folks and nowhere else. Sorry. Well friends this flower here as gorgeous as it is we probably will not see this in the states for at least six to seven maybe eight years. He's a good neighbor and only sends this special clone as gorgeous as it is to his neighboring countries. Does he say it has a name yet? I don't know who said it has a name. Well we should. After touring the breeding houses Bernard and his brother took us to lunch on the littoral coast of the Mediterranean and it was amazing. Having lunch. We have the largest table in the room. It's beautiful. Excited. It can rain. After lunch we visited one of the growers locally that grows anemones exclusively and it was past the point of the season so we were just looking at the house basically at the end of the season but it was super impressive. And then we went to one of Bernard's grow houses a farm where they're growing out corms for the family. So they're this is all amandine salmon in here amandine sorry I know how to say it now and so anything that is not amandine oh my gosh this is going to take some getting used to anything that's not amandine they pull so you see him carrying some pink ones up here they want everything to be the right color obviously when they sell the corms so these are like random pink ones that he's pulling and so now they're also there's a machine down there that's giving them all a haircut you can see these evolve and chop because this is for corm production beautiful glass houses oh my lemon there's a yellow one back here gotta work to get those shots the size of these dosatrons are much larger than mine much larger peony root production lots and then I believe these hoop houses are also peonies you can see some buds in there need to check out in the redonks no worry there's a peephole i'm doing a 360 and we're gonna wave in three two wave eucalyptus who is this in bloom came me right now as osteospermum oh african daisies wow something different about you know oh there's a kumquat tree look at the kumquats i don't think they're ready yet super cool so you see this mower right here they're using this tomorrow to cut everything down so glena is taking what she can show me the handful that you have what you do for production though yeah when they're making the corms you know it's really just about making the best corms that you can and not about you know harvesting these flowers so champagne yeah my favorite this house that we're in right now is all anemones grown hydroponically in like vermiculite and perlite and styrofoam this house is huge i'm gonna do a turn try and go slow i am in the middle of the house so many beautiful ones they're all just budding up they look amazing and that sums up our first day in france stay tuned for more thanks for sticking around we'll see you soon