Respect your roots – Our family business

Pellens Hortensien is a family business now in its third generation. Our particular focus is on high product quality for our customers, sustainable production and high social standards for our employees. We are certified according to Global-G.A.P. and Grasp and, as a recognised training company, have been training new gardeners and wholesale and foreign trade clerks for many years.

We market our hydrangeas internationally as raw and finished goods to the specialised trade. We produce over 1 million hydrangeas per year and around 60 different varieties. Our product forms include midi in T10, annuals and perennials in T14, solitary plants in 3L, 5L, 20L and 46L containers and hanging baskets as a special form. We produce on 14 hectares of open land and 23,000 square metres of greenhouses. Around 70% of our hydrangeas leave our company as raw material. Around 20 permanent employees from five nations work for us all year round. These include semi-skilled workers, journeyman gardeners, master gardeners, gardening technicians, wholesale and export merchants and trainees. In the peak season, there are also around five seasonal workers.

History

Our company started out as a traditional agricultural business.

1950 Johannes Pellens starts growing bedding and balcony plants alongside his agricultural business.

1959 Foundation of Pellens Gartenbau GmbH, further reduction of agriculture.

1974 The first hydrangeas were added to the range.

1983 Handover of the business to Hans-Gerd Pellens. The proportion of hydrangeas in the product range increased until the company finally specialised in them completely. 2016 Handover of the company to Andreas Pellens

Partnerships

In order to continuously develop our expertise, we are an active member of several specialist working groups:

Agrobusiness Niederrhein e.V.
Economic network of the green sector in the Lower Rhine region

Unternehmerkreis Hortensien
Working group of hydrangea producers from North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.

Unternehmernetzwerk NRW
Working group for corporate governance headed by the North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Agriculture

Network

Short distances and direct contacts are important to us. That’s why we work with an international network of sales representatives who are happy to advise you on varieties and availability.

Infos

A company can only be economically successful if its employees feel comfortable there. We have therefore asked our employees what is important to them and have jointly developed a code of conduct that has been signed by all those involved. Annual employee appraisals enable us to focus on each individual and realise personal wishes and development ideas. Not everything is possible from a business perspective – but we find a common path through dialogue. Our goal is: We are a team!

We are particularly keen to enable people from our region to work for us. That is why we have completely changed our seasonal labour system. Instead of bringing in seasonal workers from Poland or Romania as usual, we have been able to hire people who live here for several years now. These are often refugees – Caritas in particular helps us to integrate them into everyday working life – but also people who are (temporarily) on short-time work or have lost their jobs.

After all, we support social projects in the region, Germany and worldwide. To this end, Andreas and Vivian Pellens are members of the Rotary Club Geldern and the Inner Wheel Club Geldern. The clubs collect donations in various ways (e.g. through membership fees or the Inner Wheel Club’s annual Advent bazaar), which are then passed on to registered associations and groups for their social work, e.g. schools in Geldern and the surrounding area receive funds for additional educational programmes, local children’s homes or women’s support centres. You can find out more about the projects on the clubs’ websites at https://geldern.rotary.de and https://geldern.innerwheel.de.

Good employees are the most important pillar of a horticultural company – at least that’s our opinion. And only good training leads to good employees. That’s why we see it as one of our most important tasks to train young people properly. By joining forces with two other horticultural companies, we are able to offer a particularly interesting, varied and comprehensive training programme. Our training programme also includes specialist company excursions (e.g. visits to suppliers) and in-house seminars to accompany examinations. Through regular feedback discussions with our trainees, we endeavour to continuously improve our training and offer our trainees the opportunity to play an active role in their training.

Family business

Andreas Pellens
The managing director

After training and spending time abroad in France, the master gardener joined his father’s company in 1996. He is now Managing Director and the creative mind behind product development and marketing: always on the lookout for new ideas, for something special for you. The father of three does not have much time for hobbies in addition to his self-employment. But when time allows, cooking with family and friends is at the top of his activity programme.

Vivian Pellens
The one with the letters

The trained journalist and social media manager is responsible for public relations and internal communications. She translates specialist information from the bosses into a readable form for websites and press releases. Her love of gardening and nature, which was awakened in her parents’ private garden, helps to compensate for her lack of technical knowledge. In addition to her household and career, this love also finds expression in the large hydrangea variety garden, the design and maintenance of which is largely in her hands.

Salar Mahmoud
The Operations Manager

Although he is not a blood relative, he has long been part of the company family and is Andreas Pellens’s right-hand man. He is responsible for the entire management of production. Somehow, he manages to be everywhere at once. And, as an excellent planner, he always keeps track of everything. After work, his family is his top priority.

Staff
Our large family

No company runs smoothly without good employees. Our family of companies includes 25 permanent employees, including 2 master craftsmen, 1 agricultural engineer, 3 journeymen, 1 businessman, semi-skilled labourers, trainees and up to 10 seasonal workers. We also have 14 sales representatives in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Russia and the Middle East. Being able to talk to each other and open up individual development opportunities is very important to us in this family. To be what we are: A good team.