Hoek Van Holland Landscaping Ltd.

A Full Service Landscape Construction Company

Who is Hoek Van Holland?

HVH Origins and History

HVH in Victoria

Steve Strybosch

Hoek Van Holland Defined
(hook vän hôl´änt) or Hook of Holland: district of Rotterdam, W Netherlands, on the North Sea. It is an outer port of Rotterdam, with which it is connected by the New Waterway. It is a terminus for ships that cross the English Channel from Harwich, England.
My father named the original business after the town of Hoek Van Holland where he worked on the ships when he was a teenager. He wanted a company name that reflected his Dutch heritage. My father emigrated to Canada from Holland in 1957.

HVH Origins and History

     Hoek Van Holland Nursery and Landscaping was created and built in 1972 by Peter Strybosch at Steeles Avenue and Brimley Road in a suburb of Toronto called Milliken. It was created after Peter had created and sold a successful landscape/maintenance business called Agincourt Lawn and Landscaping which maintained the grounds of several large commercial properties in Toronto, Honeywell, Rockwell, Dad's Cookies, and IBM included.
     Garden Center and Landscaping Ontario (Peter and Heather Strybosch) 1970 -1982- land sold- business leased
     Landscaping re-established by Steve Strybosch in Lindsay, Ontario-1989
moved to Victoria- 1992

HVH in Victoria, since 1992 Since 1992, when Steve drove his truck and trailer west . . .

Steve Strybosch Steve Strybosch grew up with his parents and three younger brothers in the suburbs of Toronto which were once country corn fields. His parents had a garden centre/landscape company called Hoek Van Holland Nursery. In the early days, Steven worked at the nursery weeding and bagging up rock and soil products, watering the plants, selling firewood in the winter, and soon began going out with the landscape crews on landscape sites. Quickly gaining skill and experience at driving the bobcat and installing interlocking brick, the foundations of his business was being laid even at this time. All before Steven was 16 years of age.
In 1982, his parents sold the land and moved to Sutton Ontario, where his dad semi-retired working part time for a swimming pool contractor. His father ran the installation crews and Steven helped with the excavation of pools around the Newmarket area.

Peter then got involved with creating a bakery business in Lindsay Ontario, so the family moved again to Lindsay, Ontario and a new career for all lay ahead. Steven and his brothers learned to run a bakery business. During this time, however, Steven missed Toronto and moved back there with his grandparents, working at a bakery in Toronto, finishing high school and deciding he wanted to work outdoors after all.
He worked for his fathers old landscape company and logged in lots of hours. The company sent him to take the Landscape/Horticulturist course at Humber College. When he graduated from that course in 1987 all ready having completed the required 6,800 hours he received his certificate from the provincial government giving him his certificate as a landscape-horticulturist-greenskeeper. He had found a good friend in his landscape construction teacher and proceeded to work with him for the next few years until he decided to go out on his own and start up Hoek Van Holland Landscaping again. Steven completed a business outline and received a government loan in which he then set out with the help of his family to start Hoek Van Holland Landscaping in 1990.