At Triple Wren, we love sharing beauty. In fact, the greatest joy we find in our work comes from connecting with our Legacy Program hybridizers and bringing their unavailable or obscure varieties to market so that more gardeners can enjoy growing the incredible diversity of beauty they’ve created. As more and more home gardeners begin to save and grow seeds, we have been receiving an increasing number of requests from novice hybridizers asking how to tell the world about the dahlias they’ve grown. Many of the inquiries have come from gardeners who have grown our Bloomquist Mix Dahlia Seeds or Triple Wren Field Crossing Mix Dahlia Seeds, and others have come from gardeners who saved their own seed. Many of the images our seed-growing friends have sent in are exceptionally beautiful, and we are so thrilled to see them flourishing in your gardens!
We have created 3 different opportunities for hybridizers of different experience levels.
Beginner Hybridizer: Hybridizer Hub
This opportunity is for all of you who are fairly new to the wonderful adventure of growing dahlias from seed. If you’d like to learn more about how to go about hybridizing your own dahlia varieties, we have created a Hybridizer Hub over in The Garden. We have topics that include:
- How to decide whether a seedling is a “keeper” or not
- Genetic traits to consider
- Timeline for seedling observation
- What to record about your observations
- Bees vs. Intentional Pollination
- Seed Collecting
- How to Seek Outside Validation for Your Seedling
- and more!
We are adding valuable information to the Hybridizer Hub weekly! If you’re interested in learning more about hybridizing dahlias, consider joining The Garden today!
Novice Hybridizer: Novice Hybridizer Program
This opportunity is for those of you who already have experience hybridizing a dahlia and would like some help sharing it with the world.
We’ve realized that the novice hybridizers who are asking us for advice all have one or more of the following things in common:
1. They’re new to bringing a dahlia into the public spotlight
2. They don’t have the space or capacity to grow out larger quantities of their new dahlia so that it can be offered widely
3. They don’t have an existing marketplace to tell about their dahlia
4. They don’t have a customer support team, shipping team, marketing team, etc. to support their dahlia sales.
If you find yourself in the situation of having an amazing, beautiful, new dahlia that you’d like to share with gardeners all over the U.S., but are coming up against any of these barriers, we now have a solution for you!
We’re excited to announce that Triple Wren is accepting applications to join our Novice Hybridizer Program. You can apply to have your best dahlia(s) spend a year with us at Triple Wren Farms to undergo field trials, propagation trials, and third-party evaluations. The application requires that you own the rights to the dahlia(s) you’re submitting, that you have not already begun distributing or selling them, that you have at least two full seasons of observation, photos, and detailed notes for the dahlia(s), that you have at least 10 saved tubers from your dahlia hybrid(s) [so that you can send us 4 and keep a minimum of 6 to grow and continue observing in your own garden], and that you agree to allow Triple Wren Farms to evaluate and provide feedback on your dahlia(s). If this is something that you’re interested in, you can find the application here.
Experienced Hybridizer: Legacy Program
This opportunity is currently by invitation only and is for dahlia hybridizers who have years and years (and sometime decades and decades!) of experience hybridizing dahlias. We currently have eight Legacy hybridizers and we are so honored to help them bring their wonderful creations to market. Our current Legacy hybridizers are Paul Bloomquist, Steve and Sandy Boley from Birch Bay Dahlias, Noni Morrison, Kristine Albrecht, Walt and Cory Wynne, Glenn Gitts, Ken Greenway, and Jean Heeringa.
What is our Legacy Program? We help hybridizers by growing out their creations on a large scale and marketing their dahlias to our customers all over the U.S. For every Legacy dahlia purchased from Triple Wren Farms, a portion of that sale goes back to the original hybridizer every year, from every sale. We have worked hard to provide the hybridizers represented in our Legacy Collection with fair compensation for their craft, and have freed them up from the task of producing large, salable quantities of their varieties so that they can focus on creating the spectacular dahlias we all love and enjoy.
Which program is right for you?
If you have any questions about these programs, please reach out to [email protected] and we’d be happy to help you.