SNEEBOER & ZN - MorningCalm JULY 2018

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PERENNIAL GARDEN

Sneeboer & Zn has been hand-forging gardening tools in the Netherlands since the end of World War I. Now its time-tested steel and titanium products are sold all over the world, helping people grow the garden of their dreams.

This past April, scientists harvested the first crops successfully grown in Antarctica. Wherever people go, greenery always follows, and one day we’ll even grow plants on Mars. It’s our story in a nutshell — a species not very suited to the climates of Earth, but equipped with an uncanny talent for inventing the tools we need for life.

For three generations now, Jaap Sneeboer’s family has been in this very human business of making tools for the gardens we love to grow. In 1911, Sneeboer’s grandfather, Arie Sneeboer, moved to a small village in the Netherlands called Grootebroek. He started his own forge in 1913, but he was soon drafted into the army at the outbreak of World War I and stationed near the neutral Dutch border. When he returned to his business after the war ended, his iron-and-steel tools quickly became popular with nearby blacksmiths for their unmatched quality.

In the tradition of Arie, Sneeboer & Zn (an abbreviation of the Dutch word for “sons”) still continues to hand-forge its tools in Bovenkarspel, a village right next to Grootebroek. “We still use sledgehammers that were made in 1920,” says Jaap Sneeboer. “When you enter our company, you enter a museum.”

At the time Sneeboer took over the business from his father, the company produced about 40 different tools. Now it makes around 240, including garden-variety trowels, spades, bulb planters and shovels. But there are also tools for very particular purposes — a daisy weeder, built to quickly eliminate daisies and dandelions from their roots without damaging nearby plants; a stone scratcher for removing unwanted growth sprouting from the thin cracks between stones, and a transplanting trowel that has a handy bottle opener built into its blade.

Sneeboer designs most of his tools himself, but sometimes the designs don’t come to fruition for years. The Titanium Set took three years to produce. Tough and light, titanium is a material Sneeboer calls “magic” — and magic comes at a cost. If demand were too high, he would have to worry about sourcing enough of the expensive grade of metal he uses. “Although I must admit, during 2017 we did sell 16 or 17 of these sets,” he says with some concern. “But it was the best thing. It had to be done.” As the company celebrates its 105th anniversary, the Titanium Set seems all the more a tribute to longevity.

At the Chelsea Flower Show this year, Sneeboer unveiled the Field Shef. It’s a multipurpose tool that’s part spade and part fork, and it can both dig into tough soil and cut through stubborn roots with ease. The stainless steel is shaped to precision using a water-jet cutter, after which the hybrid blade and tines are forged in a coal fire. No part of production is automated. “We do everything ourselves. We don’t outsource anything,” Sneeboer says. “I think it’s the best tool I’ve ever designed.”

Attending the Chelsea Flower Show is an annual event for Sneeboer, not only to exhibit new products but also to surround himself with the world’s most creative gardeners. You can’t last as long as Sneeboer has without keeping a finger on the pulse of international horticulture. “I travel all over the world, and traveling is exhausting,” he says. “But meeting people from all over the world — it’s an enrichment.”

In the Netherlands for a brief period in the mid-17th century, the popularity of tulips drove prices so high that
a single bulb of a rare variety could buy a lavish house in the heart of Amsterdam — and in some instances, bulbs were exchanged for real estate. More recently, the Dutch passion for gardening has endured in distinct philosophies that touch on the existential. Sneeboer admires garden designer Piet Oudolf, one of the foremost figures of the Dutch Wave, which emphasizes natural-looking gardens over rigidly formal ones. “There’s always some kind of wind,” says Sneeboer. “The garden is always moving.”

Oudolf’s appreciation of movement is also a love of the seasons — from growth to decay and growth again. And Sneeboer, too, believes that gardening gives you a keener sense of time. “One year in the gardening cycle is, in a human cycle, a whole life,” he says. “You plant the seeds, you grow, and then slowly you grow old.” While this might sound somber to some, he doesn’t think of it that way. “Every gardener is making his own picture,” he says. “And every day the picture changes.”

Sneeboer took over the business in 1986, when he was just 30 years old. Now the company ships worldwide, and decades after he took the helm, Sneeboer is still brimming over with new ideas — so much so that his wife has set a rule that he can only introduce one tool a year. “I think it’s something in our genes,” he says. Just 15 people work for the company, many of them immediate family members. One day he’ll pass the reins to his son and daughter, turning three generations into four.

Flowers and vegetables grow extravagantly in the Sneeboer family gardens. After a day of working the soil, Jaap Sneeboer might enjoy a cold beer — the bottle cap snapped off with his transplanting trowel, of course. Surveying the fruits of his labor, he’ll be enjoying this season and looking forward to the next.