Ferdinand Hlaváček

František Černý with an apprentice in his garden

František Černý and his wife

František and Marie Černý with a begonia classifier

Lily-of-the-valley rootstocks for fast growing

František and Jan Černý - checking of production seedling stand

Alenka Černá - selection of plants for seeds production

Jan Černý - evaluation of experimental hybrids

From the right - Josef Černý, Jan Černý and his wife Vlasta and their son Jan

Ferdinand Hlaváček (1822 – 1897)
Founded his garden-husbandry in a place of a former pond in Jaroměř in 1859. He was said to have a merchant talent since his childhood. As an adult man he meliorated a marsh and besides growing flowers and vegetables he started to deal with selling seeds. He used to travel round his country but also abroad to get seeds. The family still has a box for sneeshing brought by a Dutch seedsman, who wanted to meet his good customer.

František Černý (1865 – 1925)
The first one with this name in the family of gardeners. František got a training in gardening. At first he worked in Moravia. In 1888 he became a gardener in Rotschild's park Hohe Warte in Vienna, which was even more famous than the gardens in Schönbrunn. Local greenhouses supplied Austrian castles with flowers. The Baron Rotschild was one of the richest men in the monarchy and he loved flowers. Exotic stuntings and a lot of decorative plants had to be part of his festive tables.

František Černý wanted to gain independence. It is said that a certain countess refused to employ him because he was too handsome and dangerous for women. After taking part in gardening work for „Music and Theatre Exhibition“ in Vienna in 1892 he was recommended to the Count Radziwill as a main gardener in the Russian part of Poland. However, he started to work for his relatives - the family Rembelinsky – in Krosniewice in the end. He got a luxurious flat, a horse, a carriage, a sleigh and a good salary. Nobody knows why he left after a few years. When visiting Jaroměř he met Marie Hlaváčková and married her. His career moved from castle parks to market gardening and seed management. He didn't like innovations and never really took to seed management. He preferred flowers. We still have a white treerose blooming continuously throughout the season in our glasshouse planted in his period to enable to decorate bouquets even in winter.

František Černý (1896 – 1968) and Marie Černá (1903 – 1987)
Next family descendant, son František, returned to seed management. His father didn't want his son to follow in his footsteps. He knew the hard work connected with gardening and he fancied his son's future differently. But František was born to be a gardener and finally he had his way to his favourite profession. When his father was already seriously ill František married Marie Mojžíšová from another old family of gardeners from Náchod. After his father's death they specialized in seed production and had a clear target – to shake the monopoly of German companies. They started to deal with cultivation of petunia, later also begonia, lily-of-the-valley, salvia, cyclamen and cineraria. It was by coincidence, in fact. František saw boxes with petunia pendula grandiflora in front of a seed company in Hradec Králové and it literally bewitched him. He set off to the greatest petunia paradise – Germany. In 1927 he sowed the first petunia and the following year he and his wife were already trying possibilities of pollination and selection of the most suitable plants. Their colourful colony was expanding. In 1934 the family Černý introduced their first own variety Karkulka ( Little Red Riding Hood ), which can still be found in its modified form in the assortment. Then further original varieties came. Petunia was supplemented with begonia semperflorens and bulbous begonia.

Marie Černá dealt with cultivation of bulbous begonia all her life and beautiful resistant varieties with double flowers are the result. Černý´s seeds won recognition gradually and after the war pruduction couldn´t cover demand any more. In 1950 František Černý had to rent his enterprise to the state and ten years later it was expropriated completely. Despite that he devoted the rest of his life to flowers. He used to say „Trading with seeds means trading with trust, in fact“.

Jan Černý (1928 – 1980) and Alenka Černá (1928 – 2000)
His son Jan got a training in gardening. He met his wife Alenka at gardening school in Lednice na Moravě, where everybody really interested in this field tried to make up for his education after the war. Jan then continued at the University of Agriculture in Brno. His work was strongly influenced by Professor F. Frimmel, a pioneer of a new method of breeding of F1 hybrids. He and his wife started to deal with hybrid varieties at the time when their enterprise was nearly not their own any more.

In 1959 they introduced the first hybrid Begonia semperflorens Turov F1 on the market. One of his dreams that came true was a yellow petunia. Cultivation programme brought a lot of new varieties. In 1980 Jan Černý died suddenly. It was thanks to his wife Alenka that the valuable genetic material was preserved in its size and quality. It was not easy to manage tasks originally shared by three people. The range was and is enormous. It is necessary to evaluate up to one hundred thousand plants in one season.

Present
At the beginning of 1991 the enerprise went back to the hands of the original owners, the Černý family. Nowadays Josef Černý (born in 1959), Jan Černý Sr. (born in 1957) with his wife Vlasta (born in 1955) and their son Jan (born in 1978) work in the company.

The firm is still a specialized seed enterprise producing seeds of own varieties, which are result of a wide breeding activity. New varieties are launched on the market every year. Seeds are supplied to wholesale customers, gardeners and flower lovers. Besides that the company offers a wide range of flower seeds especially aimed at professional gardeners. More than 100 original varieties of petunia, begonia, cyclamen, lily-of-the-valley and other flower varieties have been bred in the company since 1934.