A DUTCH AUCTION

Evening Star, Issue 18998, 21 July 1925, Page 12

A DUTCH AUCTION

FLOWER-SELLING AT AALSHEER

One of the most interesting excursions that can be made by the visitor to Holland whoso tastes are horticul-j tural is to the village of Aalsmeer, which lies a few miles to the south of Amsterdam and Haarlem. The whole district is a network of waterways, canals, ditches, and drains, and contains besides numerous larger stretches of water. Much of the land has. indeed, only been reclaimed by draining, and the soil consists of rich black; alluvium constantly enriched by further material obtained by dredging or dug from fresh areas that < have been drained. The water level is never more than a foot or two below the surface of the soil, and the numerous waterways afford a cheap and convenient; means of transport Plants in flower ‘ that would bo shaken to pieces by, road transport can bo conveyed in safety by motor boat to all parts of Holland, and it seems, too, that the large area of water as compared with that of the land maintains a more uniform temperature, and enables the district to escape in spring those late frosts which are disastrous to budding vegetation. The railway deposits the visitor in the main street of the village, and lie sees at once that it is occupied by no ordinary community (writes a correspondent of ‘ The Times ’). Each house seems to he situated in a nursery j garden. Immediately opposite the [ station one grower specialises in slipped; box trees, while Ids next door neighbor has close-set rows of the lilac treev? for which Aalsmeer is specially famous. Each house is approached by a light suing bridge across the waterway which borders the road, and the visitor cannot fail to be struck by the fact that the owner of any one garden seems perfectly at liberty to take him into his neighbors’ plot without even the formality of asking their leave. Glass-houses are already numerous, and more are rapidly springing up on I all sides. They seem to bo less suh-| stantially and much more economically built than those in nurseries in Eng-! land, and it is certainly an advantage! to be able to obtain glass cheaply from Belgium. In the early months of the year the most important crop is lilac. Tins comes to market in the form of loi g leafless sprays with a stem of some loin or 18in in length, topped by two or i three fino heads of bloom. Owing to ; the nature of the soil the trees form masses of fibrous roots, and can bo moved with a ball of soil attached to, them, so that they receive hardly-any! chock to their growth. Other ' houses are filled with roses, I while others hold hydrangeas of every i shade of bine and pink. _ Gloiro de Lorraine begonias, gloxinias, cyclamen, etc. These are followed by chrysanthemums later in the year, and daidias,! anemones, and pyrethrums are some of the crops winch are grown in the open. Any description of this enterprising village community would be incomplete

without some account of the ingenious and expeditious methods by which the cut flowers and pot plants are sold. A separate building is devoted to each, and consists of a large shed in which the flowers are collected, 'and from which they are despatched, and of the room through which they pass to he sold. The cut flowers are placed on double-decked trolleys, 6ft or Bft long and about: 3ft broad, and these trolleys are wheeled in turn into the selling room. This looks like a lecture room, with its steeply-tiered seats and rows of desks. Each desk is numbered and let to a regular buyer. The numbers correspond to others in the centre of a huge dial which faces the buyers, and which is fixed on the wall above the place to which the trolleys are brought. The dial is numbered round its edge from 1 to 100, and each division represents a cent. The man in charge of the flower-laden trolley holds up a rose or one spray of lilac as a sample from the heap 'before him, and immediately the pointer on the dial begins to swing round from 100 towards 1. Presently it stops, and a red lamp glows in' one of the numbered divisions which correspond to the numbers on the desks. This show's that the occupant of a desk has pressed an electric button on it, stopped the pointer, and bid so many cents for each rose or spray of lilac. ( The price is noted by a clerk, and the next batch is offered. If another buyer is anxious to obtain some of the flowers, he naturally presses the button before the pointer has descended to the point at which the previous lot was sold, and thus the Dutch auction system tends to keep prices up. The rale continues silently and expeditiously, for the trolleys of flowers succeed one another in rapid succession, and there is none of the hesitation between the bids which often prolongs sales in England. The only difference in the case of the pot plants and such things as pansies and primroses grown in boxes is that they are placed on trolleys suspended from an overhead rail which runs through the sale room and out again into the store shed. Prices are liigh, roses fetching sixpence or eightpence apiece, and lilac as much a-s a shilling a spray in early April, and what is still more astonishing is that the vase bulk of the trade is with Germany! Obviously a good many people in Germany must have money to spend on luxuries.