May 7, 2004

Blooms of Bressingham Consolidating New Plant ProgramSource: Various

In an effort to provide worldwide assistance to breeders, Perennial Plant Products, trading as Blooms of Bressingham North America, has purchased Blooms of Bressingham Plant Varieties, Ltd.

Management of both the United Kingdom and North American new variety development activities will be under the direction of Gary Doerr, president of Blooms of Bressingham North America. According to Doerr, the consolidation will reduce territorial barriers and allow breeders to have unrestricted access to global markets through the Blooms of Bressingham program.

“Our goal is to continue the Blooms’ tradition in being a leader in introducing new varieties,” said Doerr. “By having access to a global marketplace, there’s more opportunity for us to fulfill our obligation to the breeder.”

Services Blooms of Bressingham provide include extensive branding and targeted promotional programs, worldwide production and distribution licensing, comprehensive trialing services at secure sites, market analysis, and free consultation.

“We’ll continue to evaluate the marketplace in North America. As demand increases, we’ll review the addition of other propagators in North America,” says Doerr. “Our primary attention beyond that is in Europe. We’re in the process of making a market assessment for Europe and determining how best to proceed there.”

The company’s first step towards expanding to a larger market is the addition of new propagators in Canada and Washington. These additions bring the total number of Blooms of Bressingham North America propagators to 13.

“Because we now have all activity under one roof, one of our goals is to expand the sources of varieties for the grower/retailer marketplace. One of the first actions that we took was to license three companies in Canada to assist us in that regard,” said Doerr.

The newly licensed propagators are Bloom Source in Ontario, Bowman Greenhouses in British Columbia and Pepiniere Charlevoix, Inc. in Quebec. “These new propagators will supply plant material strictly for the Canadian market,” says Doerr. “There is sufficient demand in Canada for these propagators to meet production needs.”

Additionally, B & B Labs in Mount Vernon, Wash., is a licensed propagator for all Blooms of Bressingham varieties in the United States and Canada. “B & B has played a critical role in Blooms’ virus clean-up efforts and continues to be an excellent partner in supplying quality plant material for the Blooms propagator network here and abroad,” says Doerr.

For more information, visit www.bloomsofbressingham.com.