The Route of Flowers

The best roses in the world are produced in Ecuador, and just as other countries stand out for their route of wine or route of coffee, we offer our visitors the experience of the magic everydayness of our flower farms to discover colors, smell scents and adventure in their incredible landscapes.

The Route of Flowers opened in 2010. Since then visitors from all over the world have come and been impressed by the high quality standards and the fantastic experience of harvesting roses of 400 different colors. All this embraced by the natural scenario, encounters with rural worlds and hikes, horseback or bike rides.

Rosadex and Hacienda La Compañia

The Hacienda invites us to live an experience full of history. Part of the tour around this plantation, where 70 different varieties of roses are grown, includes a visit to the Museum of Roses and the Hacienda house, built in 1919 in the French neo-classical style; it preserves its roofs, floors, wall paper and furniture intact.

Six generations have walked through this hacienda. Since 23 years ago, Francisco Vallejo and his brother in law Andres Moreno are in charge of the rose plantation. Meanwhile, Maria Gloria Moreno, Francisco’s wife, is responsible for the Hacienda house.

230 people work in the 24 productive hectares, mostly women who live in the surrounding area. They are a great team which not only bets on hard work, they also have a strong devotion to “el Señor de la Buena Esperanza” (the Lord of Good Hope), who blesses their fields. The image, together with other sculptures of the prestigious Quitenian School of Art, stands in the property’s chapel built by the Jesuits in the XVII century.

Most tourists who enjoy this experience come from Europe, specially Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Nordic countries like Sweden and Denmark. Koreans, Japanese and Russians are also fascinated by the production processes and are impressed by the size of stems and rose buds.

Family members guide the tourists; they know every single detail of the stories of this land. A world of strategies and an advantageous location provide for excellency and the success of Ecuadorian flowers worldwide.

It is important to make a timely reservation to visit Rosadex and the Hacienda La Compañía. You may do this with any travel agent or by writing to their offices at haciendalacompania@yahoo.com. The tour includes meals (breakfast, brunch, lunch or mid-afternoon coffee) in the old house’s spectacular dining room decorated with hundreds of roses from their fields, good taste captured in the beautiful French tapestries, and with exclusive details from Ecuador and Europe.

Florentina Flowers

It is a green farm which during the last six years has been steadily working with organic practices, where natural waste is as important as the microorganisms produced in their laboratories for bio-fertilization and plague control.

Gino Descalzi, company CEO, greets us with extreme kindness and in the most entertaining way teaches us about the flower industry in Ecuador. We walk part of the 22 hectares where 62 amazing varieties of roses are produced under the responsibility of 280 employees.

The feeling of going through the greenhouses is overwhelming; the warmth of the area accompanies us and makes us feel small in front of such an extension, and of the height and thickness of the stems holding the colorful rosebuds. While we go deep down the aisles of the plantation we smell the fragrance of the flowers and find employees harvesting and caring for the plants.

Fiorentina Flowers not only introduces us to their 28 blocks of roses, it also invites us to live an experience unique among all other farms: to see the laboratories where a biological world is created to go back to the farm by means of organic fertilizers and pesticides.

The Ecuadorian industry got used to working with chemicals only, and to many it is difficult to abandon such practices.

Nevertheless, Fiorentina Flowers decided to get involved in organic techniques to find effective solutions to their needs. For example, in order to fight plagues they use fungi that benefit the plants, such as Trichoderma, which fights other fungi such as Botrytis, a species that thrives in the environment and is damaging.

This farm has daily and weekly routines during which they feed the soil with the compounds produced in the laboratory, thus their plants are greener, healthier and more productive. In Gino’s words, “the route of roses is important because it allows more contact with the product than the store alone; it is an opportunity to know about the good practices we develop and to feel the warm environment we live in the farm”. To schedule your visit, you can email gdescalzi@fiorentinaflowers.com