What is your first name or how are you generally known as?
Theo, most of the times, but, depending on who’s addressing me it can also be dad, daddy or granddad. I would rather not mention all of my pet names.

 Have you got any other first names?
The official names my parents gave me are Theodoor Arnold; the first one my parents gave me because they thought I was ‘a gift from the gods’, my wife and children will probably not agree with that. The second name came from a very, very dead relative.

And, your surname?
Ehhhh, Boerma, but a few generations ago it was Van ‘t Hoff Boerma. As you can tell, we didn’t make a lot of progress over the past centuries.

When were you born?
The 5^th of June 1942 in Heerlen, right in the middle of the WW2. So that would make me a ‘war-baby’.

Can everyone contact you easily via internet, what is your e-mail address?
If anyone has the need to, they can reach me at: theo@boerma.nl

Do you work full-time or free-lance at Boerma Instituut ?
I think my wife and I have been very, very fulltime the past 24 years, but unfortunately we won’t be able to show any of this by means of employers certificate. You can however, count the grey hears on my head!

What is your position and what kind of work do you do?
This is a very simple question with a very long answer. The first thing is that, for the past 35 years, I’ve been teaching floral art passionately. That’s longer then any teacher in Holland ever did.

The last 25 years of this have been in my own school,

the Boerma Instituut in Aalsmeer.

I’ve always been the ‘handy man’, basically this means that whatever needs to be done to keep the private school running smoothly, I did and, if I might add, with lots of passion. Next to teaching this meant that I have preformed all the tasks that came with owning your own company.

Here are some of the things that needed to be done:

Helping to build the school.
Clearing up 400.000 kilo’s of rubbish ( a very, very big mess )
I’ve lost count the times I’ve swept the whole car park of the school.
Carrying cart loads of flowers in to the school.
Painting the whole outside of the school and
the kerbstones around the car park.
Countless times of scrubbing the floors.
Answering phone calls, listening to the answer phone, filling and posting thousands of envelopes.

Pointing out parking spaces to huge amounts of students, in a car park that was way to small. (I even earned  25 cents with that once) 

Giving cars a push-start, crawling on hands an knees, trying to find car keys in the middle of the night.

Searching along the Legmeerdijk,
 to find documents that were left on a car roof.

Phoning the ANWB when someone left their car lights on… again.

Phoning the police 12 times over after crashes in front of the school,
on the Legmeerdijk.

Trying to catch a rogue cow and lifting a dead calf out of a ditch.

Organizing Lots of unforgettable party’s.

Getting the ‘nerves’ lots of times.

And never ever regretting starting this whole operation with my wife and children.

Not even mentioning  all the fun things that the international and world wide part of this school brings.
But you can read these things on the rest of this website.

Have you been doing this for long?
In 1968, I was 26 then, me and the rest of my family moved from Heerlen to Aalsmeer. This was due to the fact that I was hired to be a teacher at the Rijks Middelbare Tuinbouw School in Aalsmeer. The first one of it’s kind in Holland to teach floral art.  The same sort of education followed a few years later in Breda and Nijmegen.

After a few years, I got more and more requests from flower growers who were looking for an education in floral art, mainly to present the products they were growing. Back then they still needed a permit to establish a business, a certificate of qualification for retailers and traders and a certain credibility and last but not least a professional diploma.

This could only be done after they took a national exam to get this diploma, an exam that was available for everyone, even if they didn’t have the proper education. By the way, they weren’t allowed to follow the professional school for floral design either, seeing as they couldn’t comply to the compulsory student internship.

The biggest problem for these people is that there was no school in Holland who provided such an education for this exam! After still incoming requests,
I decided to start something up. Besides my full time teaching job at the RMTS, I started teaching evening courses.
After a small article in the local newspaper, I was fully booked for three evening courses.

From 1972 till 1980 - as the only one of it’s kind in Holland-  I gave evening courses to prepare for the national exams. First in Aalsmeer, later in Uithoorn.

P.s.: In 1982, that’s ten years(!) After I started teaching the evening courses, someone at the ministry of agriculture finally realised that there was a need of evening courses for grown-ups. From that year on, a few agricultural schools started the same courses.

How did you land up teaching at Boerma Instituut?
The story above is the reason I quit my teaching job at the RMTS in 1980. Back then a very safe and secure job with a very nice salary and lots of holidays.

I declined the honour and started the Boerma Instituut. 

A step, which in that time, a lot of my colleagues said to be insane.

 I never regretted taking that decision. Till this day, I still run into ex-colleagues of mine, and as long as I get a far from enthusiastic response to the question: Well fellow’s, how’s life in the RMTS?

I know I made the right choice!

You teach at a school of floristry ; how would you describe your skills

and knowledge on the art?
I think, in spite of my age, it’s very reasonable.

What would be your personal favourite floral arrangement?
I don’t really have any favourites, from a corsage to big projects like car and hall decorations, as long as I’ve got nice materials to make them with and of course time. But for an arrangement in my house, I still like the classic vase with an big bunch of flowers in it.

In love, engaged, married or what?
In love or something, for the past 40 years now, of which
I was engaged for 1 year and married for 40 and some more years.

 Have you got children?
Yes. I have 2 daughters.

Jacqueline and Nicolle:
more information on them can be found on this website. 

What is your favourite holiday destination?
Travelling has always played a very important part in my family and my life. It never really mattered where we were going, as long as it was far away and new, the sun forever shining and hot. 

What is your favourite food?

Everything that’s new and different, but especially Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and real Chinese. Nothing’s to crazy for me!

Have you got any hobbies besides Boerma Instituut?
Drawing, as long as it has got to do with flowers/ plants and the lessons;

I’ve always enjoyed travelling for the Boerma Instituut, to give lessons and demonstrations. Far and strange countries  enjoy my preference.

Collecting photo’s and other information in portfolio’s , so everyone who takes an interest can see what sort of things are done 
with flowers all over the world. 

The result of this can be found in our café; 14 well filled portfolio’s and over 6000 photo’s.

As a hobby (when I was younger) I used to practice jiu jitsu (self defence)

On Texel I obtained my parachuting certificate.

My other hobby’s maybe interesting to some of you,
but I can’t mention them now.