If you’ve bought flowers from King Soopers or Sam’s Club to plant in your beds and pots at home, they were probably grown just north of Colorado Springs at Dutch Heritage Gardens. The 20-acre complex sits hidden in plain site among ranches and multi-acre homes near Larkspur, just north of the El Paso County line. While its flowers and plants are normally available at grocery stores, twice a year the nursery opens its greenhouses to the public for tours and large plant and flower sales. It’s such a popular event that Dutch Heritage Gardens expanded its Annual Spring Open House to two weekends over Memorial Day Weekend and the following weekend.
Despite its large size, you could never known the greenhouse is there unless you were wandering the county roads around the borders of El Paso, Douglas and Elbert counties. Aaron and Rozalia Van Wingerden started Dutch Heritage Gardens there in 2006, but their family roots in the growing business run even deeper. Aaron’s great-grandfather owned a vineyard in Holland. Aaron’s grandfather emigrated to the United States after World War II and started a collection of greenhouses up and down the East Coast. He then sold them to his sons, Aaron’s father and uncles.
“There are about 25 of us that now run greenhouses. I’m the farthest west,” Aaron says. “Combined acreage with my whole family is about 700 acres in greenhouses, and we account for about 20% of all flowering plants sold in the United States.”
How to Start a Greenhouse in Colorado
Aaron was working for a different greenhouse in Ohio in the early 2000s when he got a call from his father. A greenhouse in Colorado had gone bankrupt, and it was a property Aaron’s father had started, then sold several years prior. “Let’s figure out some funding and bring it back to the family,” he told Aaron.
So the younger Van Wingerdens moved to Colorado. Rozalia began designing container gardens, finished flowering plant collections perfect for an easy and beautiful impulse purchase. Aaron put them in the back of a van and began visiting 10 to 12 Front Range grocery stores a day, offering them to the floral departments. It only took a few days before the head floral buyer from King Soopers called and invited him to Denver.
“I opened the back of my van and he said, ‘I’ll take a thousand of those, 2,000 of these, 4,000 of this.’ And that’s how our business model was born,” Aaron says.
Three years later, King Soopers offered an exclusive contract to Dutch Heritage to provide all of their annuals, perennials, hanging baskets and flowering plants for home beds and gardens. “We service about 250 Kroger stores in a five-state radius,” Aaron says. “Besides King Soopers, we also service Sam’s Club, which is not competition. It’s been a great 17-year ride.”
You can look for the Dutch Heritage Gardens tags in the plants and flowers on sale at those King Soopers and other grocery stores. And you’ll find some of their tropical plants like monstera plants at the Living Room.
How to Grow That Many Flowers
Growing that many plants takes space, and the Van Wingerdens have expanded to 18 acres of greenhouses. Walking through them is a lesson in horticultural technology. Dutch Heritage Gardens employs about 50 full-time employees and hires another 50 seasonally for the busy season of January through July. Those growers and planters perform some tasks by hand, such as hand-planting seeds and cuttings, but growers also operate state-of-the-art machinery and technology to streamline the process.
“We do 7 to 8 million cuttings every year and about 5 million seedlings,” Aaron says. “So we have to have technology in order to get all that done.” One robotic planting arm has used AI to recognizes various cuttings, pick them up and plant them in trays. “A good person sticking cuttings can do about 400 cuttings an hour. One of those machines can plant 2,000 cuttings an hour.”
The ultimate goal is to optimize growing conditions for each type of plant in order to maximize its growth. Within the greenhouses, temperature and humidity levels are adjusted for specific types of plants. Watering is done in several different ways, including floor flooding from beneath, spraying and leaching, and excess water is recaptured and reused. Plants are rotated overhead to ensure that they do not drip and overwater the plants beneath them.
One area uses a Japanese technology that the staff calls the green eggs. “It combines high pressure air and water to such a degree that it shatters the water particle into nano particles. It’s no longer a droplet, so nothing gets wet,” Aaron says. “We can raise the humidity in this greenhouse to 85% without getting anything wet. That’s allowed us to grow a lot of different varies of house plants that normally couldn’t be grown in Colorado.”
It’s also good for growing hemp. Dutch Heritage Gardens grows and sells hemp clones, or cuttings, to other growers for CBD production. The greenhouse also produces its own line of CD products called Royale Botanicals.
Annual Plant and Flowers Sales at Dutch Heritage Gardens
Twice a year, Dutch Heritage Gardens opens its doors to the public for a Spring Open House over Memorial Day Weekend and a Christmas Open House featuring poinsettias. The Spring Open House is especially popular as people take advantage of the wholesale plant and flower sale to stock up for their summer planting. Aaron says it draws about 15,000 people over the three days. The vast variety of annuals, perennials, hanging baskets and container gardens are on sale, as well as the greenhouse’s herbs, vegetables, collectible houseplants and CBD products. It’s such a popular flower sale that the Van Wingerdens are expanding it to two weekends this spring.
“At Memorial Day, we basically become a big garden center and allow the public to walk through here,” Aaron says. “It’s a really good, fun event.”
It’s also a perfect way to surround yourself with botanical beauty and the fascinating ways in which it’s grown.
Ready to Plant Your Flowers?
There’s good reason Dutch Heritage Gardens holds their annual plant and flower sale in late May. The rule of thumb is wait until after Mother’s Day to plant flowers outside to keep them safe from late freezes. And the Dutch Heritage flowers come in pre-grown potted gardens and hanging baskets for ready display.
This year’s Dutch Heritage Gardens Spring Open House takes place over two long weekends: May 22-24 and May 29-31, 2026. The flower sale takes place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Entry is free, but plan to arrive early as the lines form early. You can find details and directions at dhgardens.com.
Looking for some landscaping tips as spring turns to summer. Find some Colorado insights in our article Home Design Secrets: The Landscaper.
