On 23 May the Good Green festival took place at the Aeres MBO and VMBO school in Velp. Fantastic flower arrangements were displayed inside the school building and a wonderful festival took place outside with live music, sales stalls and delicious food and drinks! Marit and I were also present and presented the FloraPodium in our own market stall.

"Do you sell the flowers too?" was the frequently asked question. "No, sir, we only sell the story," was our frequently used answer. “Only the story? We don't understand that. Standing here with these beautiful flowers, and not selling them?!”. We spent hours at the festival talking about the Dutch growers who were represented at our market stall. We have spoken with students, consumers, florists and wholesalers. This was a perfect opportunity for extensive market research! We are always so curious about what consumers think of all those stories. Do they think the products are worth more because they come with an interesting story?

We have had a lot of worthwhile discussions at our market stall. For a certain group of people a flower is simply "just" a flower, but for a large part of the visitors, flowers play an important role in life. Exactly that target group stood still for minutes watching all the flowers and reading the stories. Exactly they thought these products were worth much more after they had heard the stories behind the varieties. An orchid that needs one year to start flowering, peonies grown outdoors, the Rose Lilies without pollen, Scadoxus that looks like a powder brush: such great stories! And everything grown in the Netherlands!

At FloraPodium we are surprised every week by the growers that visit us and the special stories they tell. We are inspired and we try to convey the story to all target groups in the best possible way. Fortunately we discovered that we are not the only ones who are so enthusiastic about all those special stories.

Lynn Dumoulin, 28 May 2019