Kolff Plants BV

Bare Root Transplants & Hedging

Native trees and shrubs which have been used for centuries as farm hedging are a traditional feature of our rural landscape. But they also have many uses in the garden too. They are ideal plants for defining boundaries, establishing green screens and barriers or simply for making a design statement. And, of course, they provide a haven for wildlife. Our Laurijssen Nursery in South Holland has specialised in the cultivation of bare root transplants and hedging for over three generations. Their 50 hectares of sandy, free draining soil provide ideal growing conditions and they can offer you comprehensive range.

The plants they grow are widely used in landscape and amenity planting as:

• formal hedging  – Fagus (Beech), Carpinus (Hornbeam), Buxus (Box), Taxus (Yew)
• informal hedging – Crataegus (Hawthorn),  Prunus spinosa (Blackthorn), and all the other traditional farm hedging species
• feathered native trees for woodlands and parks – Acer campestre (Field Maple), Alnus (Alder), Prunus Avium (Wild Cherry), and Sorbus aucuparia (Rowan) etc.

For the nurseryman to grow on, we can supply well graded material for lining out or potting on, including evergreen Prunus varieties, as well as top quality bushy Buxus and Taxus. For tree growers we have a full range of  under stocks for grafting. These are carefully graded by diameter either at root-collar or at the height at which they are to be worked. During the bare root season, which runs from late October until Easter, we lift fresh to order and out-load for the UK twice a week. This ensures your plants you receive are super-fresh. And your customers get their bare root transplants and hedging in peak condition for planting.

Root Ball Hedging Plants

For hedging and screening, the cost-effectiveness and instant impact of heavy grade root ball hedging plants is hard to equal. De Kuil Hedging can offer you a full range of sizes and wide choice of varieties in this key landscaping area. Whether it’s for a major commercial project or up-scale private garden work, you’ll find we have what you need at the right quality and price.

For convenience and ease of handling, we despatch all but the largest specimens on pallets and this also ensures that you receive your plants (and their root balls!) in tip-top condition for onward sale.The nursery has over 30ha of their open-ground production. They are a hedging specialist who can help you take advantage of strong market demand for good quality hedging plants.

Evergreen hedging plants in larger sizes are their speciality.

They have full control over the production process from lining out, through pruning and undercutting to lifting for final despatch and this means:

• Precision planting at optimum spacing using GPS guidance
• Regular expert pruning by hand and by machine to ensure dense, bushy plants, even in the critical top third
• Well prepared root balls that have been correctly undercut and won’t collapse on delivery
• Real continuity of supply at a consistent quality – the quality your customers expect
• And every plant dug to order ensuring minimum time between lifting and planting

The range of hedging plants we can offer you is extremely wide. As well as the key hedging lines, we produce root-balls of popular deciduous items such as Snowy Mespilus (Amalanchier), Beech (Fagus) and Hornbeam (Carpinus), hazel (Corylus) and Hawthorn (Crateagus). However, it’s the core evergreen plants such as those below that are the focus. They are what has given Kolff Plants and enviable reputation for good value root-ball hedging. Of course, we also offer bare root transplants.

Key Evergreen Hedging Plants

Taxus – The “Queen of Hedge Plants”

It may be relatively expensive, but yew is still one of our highest volume lines and its dense dark green foliage makes the perfect background to any ornamental planting. We select and mark only the best plants in each size range during the summer to ensure you (and your customers) get the pick of the crop. A wide range of sizes are available from a “starter pack” 60/80 cms, through the most popular sizes between 150/200 cms, up to substantial, instant specimens at 2.5m plus.

Prunus ‘Rotundifolia’

An increasingly popular and cost effective choice, cherry laurel gives you a glossy evergreen hedge that is fully hardy and tolerant of deep shade and any soil conditions. As a fast growing, bullet-proof screening choice, Cherry Laurel, is hard to beat. In recent seasons supply has been regularly outstripped by demand. But at Kolff Plants you will find a full range available, including magnificent specimen plants at 4m and above.

Prunus lusitanica ‘Angustifolia’

Slower growing than ‘Rotundifolia’ it may be, but Portuguese Laurel is equally adaptable to sun or shade and offers an elegant alternative. It marries the dark green compact benefits of Taxus with the robustness of Cherry Laurel and its smaller darker leaves make it more suitable than its vigorous cousin for tight clipping. Faster growing and easier to establish than Taxus, it provides a cost effective solution for domestic scale screening and hedging.

Photinia 

If your customer is looking for a more informal evergreen screen, then Photinia ‘Red Robin’ is hard to beat. Its strong, bushy growth and coppery red new leaves make a powerful impact and our root ball specimens are particularly good value when compared with container-grown plants of a similar size.

Ilex

Although nearly as slow growing as Taxus, holly has a valued place in the English landscape and there is little to rival a well-grown mature holly hedge.

Although Ilex aquifolium has a reputation for being difficult to establish and a “awkward” plant to handle in its young stages, our selected and trimmed plants will give your customers hedges an ideal start. From our range, you can choose from sensibly priced hedging material to heavy grade topiary specimens, including  variegated cvs. The pick of the bunch, is Ilex aquifolium ‘Alaska’, a relatively new female cultivar, which has everything going for it. It’s our recommended choice for a holly hedge good shape, excellent foliage and the bonus of guaranteed berrying every year.

Leylandii 

From the 1970’s onwards x Cupressocyparis leylandii took the hedging market by storm. Its reputation as the fastest growing conifer available swept it to popularity, then came the backlash as gardeners realised that it could be difficult to control in a domestic environment. However, it can still be the ‘go to choice’ when space permits and rapid growth and substantial height are required. We can offer sizes from 150cms to 6 metres and more.

Thuja

If you need a substantial conifer hedge, which although fast, is not as vigorous as Leylandii then varieties of Thuja plicata are ideal and one of the most cost-effective options. As well as the various well known cultivars of Thuja plicata, we also offer Thuja ‘Brabant’ and Thuja ‘Smaragd’ in large hedging sizes.

Ornamental Trees

Ornamental Trees are at the heart of the landscape and at the heart of the nursery trade. Yet they can be one of the most problematic items for the professional nurseryman – difficult to source at the right size and quality. Awkward and expensive to transport.  So we are pleased that at Kolff Plants group we have a package that goes a long way to solving these problems for our customers.

With three major tree nurseries in our group, we are able to offer a complete tree package of readily available stock. All three nurseries are located close together, in the celebrated Dutch tree growing area of Opheusden, so combined shipments are straight forward and cost effective. Between them, our growers produce 50.000 native and ornamental trees, in 250+ varieties and comprehensive range of sizes from whips and light feathers to 25-30cm girth.

Key native trees include Acer campestre (Field Maple), Betula pendula (Birch), Carpinus betulus (Hornbeam), Fagus sylvatica (Beech) Quercus robur (Oak) and Tilia (Lime). The most popular ornamental cultivars include Acer campestre ‘Elsrijk’, Betula utilis jacquemontii, Carpinus betulus ‘Frans Fontiane’, Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropunicea’, and Tilia cordata ‘Greenspire’. Our nursery has earned an enviable reputation for the quality its whips and lightly feathered stock trees for potting on and lining out. J.W.Crum nursery is a 25 hectare tree nursery with over 20 years’ experience.

They grow a very wide range of sizes and varieties in both the open ground and containers.  They also have a large production of one year old maidens grown in air-pruning troughs. These are shipped in autumn with a exceptionally fibrous root system.The Van Meerten nursery grows a large range of 3 x transplanted trees in over 50 hectares of production. They specialise in extra heavy standards and semi mature trees in both the open ground and containers.

Pleached & Shaped Trees

Nowadays, pleached and shaped trees are recognised as key component of garden design. Whether in a small domestic garden or a grand country estate they bring a sense of harmony and a satisfying architectural structure. They can be used to create living boundaries and divisions or ensure privacy for the “Outdoor Room”. Above all, they add formal style and elegance to any design project.

Our Nursery is a family business that has been growing premium quality shaped trees for prestige projects throughout Europe for over 45 years. They grow a terrific range of shapes and varieties. Their pleached trees, box heads (box-pleached) hornbeam or beech, screens, stilt hedges, espaliers and roof trees (table top trees), as well as small numbers of top quality multi-stems and one-off, unusual topiary pieces really are the ultimate in “instant” landscaping.

Young trees are budded on the nursery and each sapling is then meticulously selected to suit its final format. In winter young trees are carefully transplanted into their final position in the field and the following summer they are ready to be pruned and shaped. Pliable shoots are tied into pre-formed bamboo frames and the summers fresh growth is trimmed and shaped over the next two or three years. Only when the final shape is fully established they are ready for sale as mature specimens.

There is of course a “fresh” pleached option which can be trained on in the customer’s own garden if you prefer. But even this cost effective option bears the hall marks of the nursery’s premium quality. We offer over 60 varieties in 30 or so different forms – from rooftrees to pleaches, from hedge-screens to cube-heads. And we are delighted to be able to offer Kolff Plants customers direct access to such superb material. It’s an inspiring nursery and well worth a visit to see what they have to offer.

Grasses & Perennials

Herbaceous Perennials have been garden classics at least since the Edwardian era, when Jekyll and Luytens put the herbaceous border centre stage in gardens. More recently these plants have become fashionable again, as the 21st century designer experiments with environmentally sustainable, prairie-style planting and using herbaceous plants in landscaping drifts. Ornamental grasses too are becoming ever more popular with modern gardeners.

The Ornamental Grasses and Perennial Growers in the Kolff group cover a very wide range of varieties. If you are looking for some choice perennials for a design scheme or large quantities for an amenity project our growers will have what you need. We supply in all the most popular pot sizes from P9, through, 1L, 2L up to 5L specimen grasses. Our ‘t Heeseind nursery focusses on the core range of landscaping staples such as Bergenia, Geranium, Salvia, and Verbena. They also have all the mainstream grasses, like Hakonechloa, Miscanthus, and Pennisetum. They grow these in substaintial quantities in 2L pots. Shipping is possible on either CC  trollies or, what is often more cost-effective, in non returnable box pallets.

Our Griffioen Wassenaar nursery is one of the leading herbaceous suppliers to garden centres and multiples in the Netherlands and mainland Europe. They grow over 600 varieties in distinctive 1L royal blue pots and have bespoke colour labels available for their full range. Their product is perfectly presented for direct retail, but their strong chunky plants are also ideal for mass landscape planting.  They can also be a useful option for potting on into 2L or 3L. Highlights of their range include Aster, Campanula, Delphinium, Geranium, Hosta, Phlox, and ornamental Salvia.

Our Van Riel Grasses nursery also mainly grows for the garden centre retail market.  Their top quality selection of these very fashionable plants is always in strong demand. All their 2L materials is supplied in  stylish “square-round” containers which are unique to their nursery.  Look out too on the availability for their increasing range of superb 5L specimens! Batch production at the nursery means that they can offer an excellent selection of visually attractive material throughout the year.

What’s more they regularly bring the latest introductions into their range, such as Carex ‘Feather Falls’, Ficinia ‘Ice Crystal”, Liriope ‘Silvery Sunproof’ and Molinia ‘Carmarthen’. All their plants are delivered on  CC trollies and large, bespoke colour photo labels are available for the entire range.