Sustainable Finnish beauty by Partaharjun Puutarha

Partaharjun Puutarha is a greenhouse company specialized in producing bulb flowers. Besides growing bulb flowers and potted plants Partaharjun Puutarha is also growing forest tree seedlings (birch, larch, pine and spruce) and we have a sawmill producing lumber, firewood and woodchips.

Partaharjun Puutarha strives to be innovative, environmentally friendly and offers good prices for high quality products. The greenhouse has an area of 52 000 square meters where the flowers, plants and tree seedlings are grown. Furthermore there is approximately 10 000 square meters of cold-storage, freezer storage and 100 000 square meters outdoor growing field.

Partaharjun Puutarha is situated in Pieksämäki, in the middle of Finland, and has been operating for 44 years.

Environmentally friendly

Partaharjun Puutarha strives to be as environmentally friendly as possible. This means we looked at our whole production chain to see if we could improve anything that will make it better for the environment.

As mentioned before 95% of our trees we use for our wood production are PEFC certified. 5% isn’t yet but that’s only because the certification isn’t there. Those forest are managed by PEFC rules but don’t have the certification. We are working hard to get also the last 5% certified.

In 2005 with the completion of our new heating system the greenhouse warming has changed from oil heating to solid fuel heating. The heating plant is now using wood chips and peat for heating and has cut back the use of oil heating to a minimum. The wood chips are all coming from our own wood production as a byproduct from harvesting and the sawmill. All the parts of the tree are used and nothing will go to waste.

In 2003 the greenhouse was modernized with new fertilizer and a plant protection center. Both of these fulfill all the requirements of environmental protection. This center has protective containers sunken into the ground so all possible runoffs can be taken into circle again.

Pink Tulip

Flowers

Partaharju Puutarha is growing approximately 38 million cut tulips in the season 2021-2022. All the tulips are grown on a hydroponic system. In this system tulips are forced in a nutrient solution. This system demands less time and less labor. 75 percent of all the tulips in The Netherlands are grown with this system.

In the season 2021-2022 the following flowers, besides the tulips, will be produced:

  • Potted daffodil tete ’a tete  1 800 000 pots
  • Muscari and other spring flowering bulbs 350 000 pots
  • Amaryllis 622 000
  • Hyacinth 850 000
  • Hanging pots

Forest tree seedlings 

Partaharjun Puutarha is growing a total of 40 million forest tree seedlings a year including 2 year old plants. And delivering between 12 and 15 million tree seedlings a year to our customers. We grow the following tree species:

  • Scots Pine (Pinus Sylvestris)
  • Norway Spruce (Picea Abies)
  • Silver Birch (Betula Pendula)
  • Siberian Larch (Larix Sibirica)

The Norway Spruce seedlings are taking up around 70% of our production. The Scots Pine 25% and the Silver birch and Siberian Larch together around 5%. The seedlings are grown inside the greenhouse until roots are developed so well that it is possible to move the seedlings outside to the growing field. Most of the seedlings are packed in the autumn and then stored in the freezer storage over the winter. The transplanting materials (little seedlings) are also stored in the freezer storage if there is space left after packed plants.

Firewood terminal

Wood

In 2014 the sawmill was completed and started to produce lumber and firewood. 95 percent of all our wood (birch, spruce and pine) is harvested from PEFC certified woods. The other 5 percent is coming from woods that are treated the same as PEFC woods but don’t have the certification yet.

Partaharjun Puutarha only takes harvested trees that are harvested from woods that comply with the rules of PEFC or FSC. This way we have the assurance the forests, where our harvested trees are coming from, are sustainable.

Our firewood producing sawmill is innovative. It is designed by Erkki Savolainen starting from an existing sawmill and turning it into a sawmill that is capable of producing 25 m3 cubic meters birch firewood an hour. Future upgrades to the sawmill will even increase the production. After the sawmill the firewood is transported by a conveyer belt into our firewood terminals.

The firewood terminals were also designed by Erkki Savolainen and build in 2014 with the sole purpose of drying the firewood. The firewood terminals can hold around 15000 m3 of firewood each. With an ingenious and environmentally friendly system the temperature inside the firewood terminal can be raised to around 50 degrees Celsius so the firewood can be dried fast.