History & Heritage

The Houweling's Hothouse group was founded in 1974 by Dutch immigrant, Cornelius Houweling in Langley, British Columbia.  Cornelius was a professionally educated Horticulturist and for many years maintained the Finnng family estate before commencing his own mixed farming operation.  Our initial business consisted of a small floral greenhouse and field berry farm.  Like many Dutch immigrants, Cornelius was dedicated to raising a family through hard work and growing high quality flowers and vegetables.

In 1976, sons, Paul and Casey, joined the business and embarked on a rapid expansion program to meet growing consumer demand for greenhouse grown floral and plant products.  In 1978, Cornelius decided to pass control of the business to his sons.  Like their father, Paul and Casey shared the same work ethic and dedication to quality as their father.  By 1980, business had grown to include three separate floral hot houses with a total growing area of 2.5 hectares.

In the early 1980's, Houweling's began researching the success of hot house grown vegetables in Holland.  We became convinced that there was a tremendous opportunity to grow hot house vegetables for the expanding Western Canadian and US Pacific Northwest markets in the lower mainland of British Columbia, which shared a climate very similar to Holland.  In 1985, the Houweling's Hothouse group purchased 92 acres of farmland in Delta, British Columbia and immediately started building the first 2.5 hectare greenhouse to grow Beefsteak tomatoes.  Over the next 10 years, Houweling's Hothouse expanded the Delta operation to include 20 hectares and pioneered large scale hot house growing of Tomatoes, Sweet Bell Peppers and Long English Cucumbers.

While retailers quickly embraced the high quality and consistency of hot house vegetables grown in British Columbia, the limited eight month production cycle created numerous marketing challenges.  This prompted us to search for locations in the southern United States that possessed the required light and climate conditions to produce consistent, high quality greenhouse grown produce items, twelve months of the year.  These conditions are found in the Oxnard area in Southern California, and in 1995 the company purchased a quarter section land parcel.  By 1996, the first 20 acre facility was constructed.  Over the next four years the company built an additional three facilities totaling 34.2 hectares.

In 1997, Casey Houweling bought out his brother's interest in the business and became the sole owner.  Due to changing market conditions in, Houweling's decided to dispose of all Floral hot houses and focus the business on growing greenhouse grown produce products, as well as plant propagation services (located in Delta, BC).

With rapidly growing demand for fresh, locally grown greenhouse products Houweling's expanded the Oxnard facility again in 2009.  This most recent expansion of an additional 16 hectares employs the most state of the art technologies available to produce premium quality, hydroponically grown produce items. 

Today, Houweling's grows a broad range of Tomatoes, Cucumbers and Starter Plants under glass in two growing locations Oxnard, CA (50.2 hectares), and Delta, BC (20 hectares).