In 1969 Hans Zwager – a Dutch World War II Marine turned entrepreneur – bought a large cattle ranch on the shores of Lake Naivasha, Kenya. The estate, set in a part of the world Hans and his wife June had loved since the early 1950’s, was Oserian.

Hans ran Oserian as a vegetable farm for over a decade. Then one day in 1982, a colleague made a simple but life-changing suggestion – that Hans use some of the land to grow a flower called statice, popular in Europe.