US (VA): Dutch ambassador visits Orange County flower grower
“The tendency here in your country is to always see the glass half full,” said Netherlands Ambassador Henne Schuwer as he kicked off a two-day visit celebrating a historic link between his country and Virginia’s Orange County. “In Europe, too often the discussion for solving problems starts with reasons something can’t be done.”
Schuwer and a small entourage from the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington began the visit to Orange County Friday morning with a reception and tour of Battlefield Farms. It’s a business that raises and sells flowers—annuals, perennials and poinsettias—to retail outlets in the mid-Atlantic region.
In welcoming remarks, the business’s founder and CEO, Dutch-born Gerrit “Jerry” van Hoven, said he came to the U.S. in 1971, and in 1990 started the business in Orange that now has more than 90 acres of growing space, the lion’s share of it enclosed in glass or under roof.
When he took the podium, Ambassador Schuwer said that van Hoven is one of many Dutch immigrants who have been able to use the values and education they got growing up in the Netherlands to create successful businesses in America. Those businesses employ nearly 750,000 people, he said.
Read more at The Free Lance-Star (Rob Hedelt)
