The Dutch surname Klaver means ‘clover’ in English, so it’s only fitting that Tim Klaver was raised surrounded by horticulture in North Holland, where his family operates a tulip farm.
Klaver is currently an intern on this side of the pond in the Section of Horticulture’s Flower Bulb Research Program with professor Bill Miller in the School of Integrative Plant Science. Every year Cornell hosts one such Dutch student intern, and Klaver was enthusiastic about signing up, given his … roots. While he has plenty of practical work experience with tulips, the native of Spanbroek came to Cornell to expand his knowledge of other flowers, such as daffodils and hyacinths, making ornamental floriculture expert Miller the perfect mentor. Miller, like Klaver, has horticulture in his blood, having been raised by a professor who earned an M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell’s floriculture and ornamental horticulture department in the 1950s, and who experimented in the very same greenhouses he and Klaver work in now.
With a childhood spent among commercial greenhouses in California, Miller’s main academic interests are floriculture, greenhouse cropping systems and the physiology of ornamental plants. He conducts research that provides New York and North American growers with the means to produce a more environmentally friendly product efficiently, research that Klaver is keen to take note of, as his interest in tulips isn’t only academic. Having previously studied business at Clusius College Hoorn in Holland, he hopes to take what he has learned at Cornell back to his home country to launch his own tulip company.