Burleigh Flowers: Young farmer’s lilies in high demand
Seasons are no longer central to the success of this sophisticated lily-growing business, writes Chantelle Francis. Here’s how young farmer Luke de Wit is meeting an increasing demand.
AT Burleigh Flowers, success has stemmed from finding a favourite bloom and doing it well.
The third-generation family farm at Silvan, in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges, specialises solely in growing lilies, but receives the best of both worlds when it comes to the market, growing up-market orientals and LA lilies as a cheaper alternative.
The business — which relies less on marketing and more on loyal customers and a good reputation — is run by 26-year-oldLuke de Wit, with the help of his parents Robert and Saskia and 12 to 15 year-round full-time employees.
“Dad is still here every day and Mum does all the bookkeeping, it’s very much a three-person team still,” Luke said.
The young farmer’s grandparents Arie and Ank de Wit, both from the Netherlands, founded the farm in 1982 and the Dutch heritage still runs strong through the business today.
Burleigh Flowers imports the majority of its bulbs from Holland, freezing them for up to eight months before planting to allow for a year-round growing operation.
What started as seasonal field crops and then plastic tunnels on 0.25ha is now a year-round lily growing operation in two climate-controlled glasshouses covering 3.5ha, with another 1.5ha glasshouse under construction.
The move is hoped to lower the average cost price for a bunch.
“A lot of fixed costs won’t go up … the machines are just working a bit harder and we’re able to pick more,” Luke said.
He said the demand for his lilies was building and the family was in a position where it had to turn customers away.
“It’s not good. We want to sell as many lilies as we can,” Luke said.
“We are hoping everything is in place so we can pick our first flowers (from the new glasshouse) for Mother’s Day 2021.
“Growing in a glasshouse is easy on one hand and difficult on the other, but the good thing is my growing area is the same every year.
“I don’t have to worry about ‘oh I might not be able to plant a crop in June if it’s cold’, I can always force grow the same amount of bulbs every year.”
LUKE DE WIT
SILVAN
RUNS the Burleigh Flowers business on third-generation family farm
GROWS lilies in 3.5ha of climate-controlled glasshouses
SUPPLIES flowers to major supermarkets
EMPLOYS up to 15 full-time employees
BLOOM TIME
ONCE they arrive at the Silvan property, Burleigh Flowers’ lilies start their life as a frozen bulb, literally waiting for their time in the sun.
“The bulb can’t tell if it’s a three-month winter or six months,” Luke said.
About a third of the oriental bulbs are imported from the southern hemisphere – currently New Zealand or Tasmania — while two-thirds of orientals and all LA lilies are imported from the Netherlands.
Each week, a few pallets of bulbs are taken out of the freezer and planted in growing boxes in a substrate made of 100 per cent coco peat — composted coconuts from India — in a shed, out of sunlight, to start “waking up”.
“(The peat) used to be a waste product in India,” Luke said.
“They use the fibres for textiles and the rest of the stuff they sell as soil and it works really well for lilies.”
The bulbs will grow for up to two weeks before being planted in the greenhouses.
“We really need to simulate the seasons because if you go from winter to summer in a week you’ll get bad quality”
“We really need to simulate the seasons because if you go from winter to summer in a week you’ll get bad quality. This way it feels like spring and they start growing slowly.”
However, the LA lilies get to skip this process and are planted straight into the soil as they are a much more hardy flower – just one of the reasons they have a lower cost price.
The team at Burleigh Flowers plant every week to ideally pick the same amount of flowers every week, with the exception of peak periods including Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
The orientals, accounting for about 60 per cent of production, grow for an average of 80 days and LA lilies about 60 days.
They are generally picked three times a week, and sometimes four times in summer when the flowers grow quicker.
EFFICIENT SYSTEM
THE Silvan farm relies on both people power and technology to produce its sought-after lilies and get them in people’s vases.
The de Wits pride themselves on their good workforce, including many long-term employees racking up one, two or nearly three decades with the company.
And while they still rely on their staff significantly, technology has made big improvements to productivity.
“We used to have a planting machine that took eight people to run it and now it is four,” Luke said.
“The whole glasshouse is very technologically driven. The climate is run by the computer.”
As for water, the farm is self-sufficient, catching rain from the glasshouse roofs over winter and storing it in dams for year-round use.
“We have a bore which we never really use, it’s there as an emergency,” he said.
“We have a creek permit and we’re allowed to pump water out but we’ve never done that. We’re very efficient with the way we grow.”
The glasshouses at Burleigh Flowers are always full and while “occasionally you make a mistake and something is overwatered or under watered and you get a tiny bit of a loss, or you get a bad batch of bulbs”, most of the flowers will be sold.
MARKET MADE
BURLEIGH Flowers sell to about 30 loyal customers, the largest being The Lynch Group which supplies to major supermarkets.
Other customers include wholesalers and a few large florists. Orientals are sold for about $8-9 and LA lilies for about $4-5.
“It’s a big market in Australia, everything has its place,” Luke said.
“There’s plenty of people out there that only want the big, heavy bunch of flowers and there’s plenty of people that want the cheaper bunch of flowers too, because they can make something nice out of that.”
Orientals are taller with bigger heads and foliage, whereas LA lilies are more compact with smaller heads but more of them.
The orientals grow in white and varying shades of pink, and the LA lilies are grown in white, yellow, orange, pink and red.
The farm’s lilies can be found in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.
Luke joined the farm full-time about three years ago, after gaining a degree in economics and working on flower farms in Holland,
Since joining, he has made an effort to diversify their customer base, exploring more flower markets and wholesales.
“We were very supermarket orientated and now we’re trying to diversify,” he said.
“We want to sell lilies everywhere in Australia — not just the one segment.”
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