Richard Jong
Country:
Netherlands
Short biography:
My name is Richard Jong. CEO of R2 Flowers BV, Future Peonies BV and Peony Showgarden Holland. Our core business is Peony brokerage. With R2 Flowers we are the middleman between Dutch growers and Dutch exporters. Thanks to our Peony Showgarden with over 4,000 varieties we can show nearly all peonies available in the market. Our third company is Future Peonies BV, our breeding company. In 2020 we moved from North Holland province to Lemelerveld near Zwolle in Overijssel province. We bought a nursery for the peonies and with enough space for my wife Ursula her horses.
More information:
Peony hybridizers series
Peony Showgarden Holland
How did you first get involved in peony hybridizing?
Since I was at school I’ve been breeding tulips. From 2013 onwards I changed to breeding peonies. Both are fun to do. But you need a couple of lives to do everything you like. I had to make a choice in my agenda.
What was your starting material for your hybridizing?
We already had the biggest peony showgarden of the world. Material enough.
What are your goals in hybridizing peonies?
We don’t have one goal in our breeding program. But most of our material is early flowering. Doesn’t need staking. Healthy. We don’t use chemicals in our breeding program. Thus the strongest material will stay alive. What’s not good enough wil be discarded. We’re not a museum.
Do you mostly depend on open pollination or do you mostly make controlled crosses?
| 100% open | 50/50 | 100% controlled |
How large is your hybridizing program?
We have quite a few seedlings, every year about 5,000 pots with 2nd year plants are placed in our greenhouse. There we already start discarding the weaker plants. We continue selecting the best every year.
Do you have any plants in the market?
We didn’t register yet at APS (American Peony Society). We still have to start doing that. But we started selling varieties in 2024. This year, 2025, we sold about 30-40 varieties to our first ring of top growers, they buy all stock of each variety. Those growers are then selling roots to our first hand exporters. We even exported complete varieties to foreign customers.
Can you describe a few of your plants that you consider the best or most beautiful and which are available now?
Click the images to enlarge and read the names below them. More info on our website of Future Peonies.
Within your current seedlings, what are the most promising ones?
Are you in contact or working together with other peony hybridizers?
We are in contact with a lot of breeders. A lot of peony people visit our Showgarden and breeding fields.
Do you have unregistered plants that are not good enough to introduce but have something ‘special’?
Yes we have a lot of material what we use for special goals.
Would you like to exchange such ‘hybridizers plants’ with other hybridizers?
We can discuss this kind of cooperation in private.
Final question. Any remarks or suggestions you may have…
Koen, thank you for your time and effort.
E-mail of this person is known to the author. If you want to contact this hybridizer, we can forward your message.
