Originally a village seed shop, Promesse de fleurs is nowadays a company based near Lille in northern France with 80 passionate employees, 10 hectares of nursery, 10,000 m2 of greenhouses, and nearly 25,000 available plant varieties. We owe this sustained and consistent growth to our values based on respect for our customers, a deep commitment to quality, and continuous innovative efforts for all gardeners.

The origins of PDF date back to the early 1950s. At the time, Mr. Christian Schryve and his wife Georgette Hanhove opened a seed shop in the Flanders region, in a little village called Hazebrouck. The business quickly gained a reputation among farmers and gardeners in the region for the quality of its flower seeds and bulbs.

The family business was taken over by Christian Schryve’s son, Jean-Claude Schryve. As plants and flower bulbs sales were flourishing, attracting customers from further afield, some customers began to request for their plants to be shipped to avoid long journeys. Thus, the remote retail trade gradually emerged, becoming the new core business of the company.

Promesse de fleurs was the first to introduce a 24-hour delivery service into the gardening sector. Orders placed before 12:00 PM are dispatched on the same day. A year later, the company launched the first ‘Garden Drive’ in France.

A ‘Gardening Advice’ (" Conseil Jardin ") website section was launched, which currently features thousands of tips, tutorials, ideas, and inspirational suggestions written by our team.

In 2019, the website exceeded one million visitors for the first time.

In 2020, the pandemic crisis created a profound shift: for many, gardens became a refuge and an essential space to reconnect with oneself and with nature.

Promesse de fleurs responded to the high demand, especially from novice gardeners, and tripled its activity. The website exceeded two million visitors per month.

Plantfit, our free app for choosing plants best suited to customers’ gardens and skills, was launched.

Offering practical solutions to help you succeed in growing your plants and combating plant over-consumption, Plantfit provides recommendations on a par with those of a professional horticulturist.

Introducing a Plastic-Free Ordering option. Since this optional service was launched in 2022, we have saved over 20 tonnes of plastic.

Our goal is to provide plastic-free, practical, and sturdy packaging that keeps plants fresh and intact, encouraging ever-more people to change their consumer habits and reduce waste. Over the past three years, we have been working on eco-design with the help of local partners and manufacturers. Our objective is for 100% of our orders to be dispatched plastic-free by 2026.

We launched our no-waste baskets (" Paniers Bons Plants,") of unsold or unfit-for-sale plants that could thrive in your gardens with a little tender, loving care (TLC).

Based in Houplines today, in Prémesques, less than a kilometre away, tomorrow: because we are a bit cramped on our traditional site, we are preparing our expansion in 2023 which will be completed by the end of 2024. We will be adding a traditional square farm building typical of northern regions of France and adjacent land to our existing premises. New greenhouses will be erected around the building and additional outdoor expanses will enable us to continue to enjoy growing and cultivating plants under optimal conditions.

This project will not only allow us to expand our operational premises (greenhouses, order processing and shipping offices) but also strengthen our local roots by hosting a scheme aiming to promote training and work opportunities for young horticulturists and farmers on 32 hectares of farmland.

Over the past decade, Promesse de fleurs has become increasingly aware of the social and environmental challenges associated with its business. In 2022, we decided to go further and created our first CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Charter committing to social progress, environmental protection, and developing a sustainable and responsible business plan.

Learn more about our CSR commitments.

Promesse de fleurs was awarded the HappyIndex®AtWork 2023 accolade that recognises  excellence in management practices and employee motivation.

With a participation rate of over 80% of its employees, Promesse de fleurs achieved a rating of 4.2 out of 5 with a recommendation rate of 70.9%.

September 2023: Promesse de fleurs’ website tops French gardening site audiences

With 2,100,000 visits according to the Similarweb institute, Promesse de fleurs’ site became  the most visited gardening website in France across all categories (nurseries, garden centers, gardening publications, etc.) in September 2023. The consistent rise in customer and reader numbers is no accident: the continued expansion in plant varieties, with over 20,000 on offer, a keen focus on customer satisfaction, a strong editorial strategy with technical plant sheets, advice dissemination (over 5,200 articles published since 2017), and a website overhaul in June of this year enhancing its responsiveness and offering an ever-more comprehensive content, each contributed to this achievement.

January 2024: Expanding its international outreach

Promesse de fleurs is revving up its ongoing international development, which started in 2015 by looking towards neighboring countries including Belgium, with the launch of an international English language website.