These gorgeous white and pale purple dahlias are two varieties I feel we couldn’t live without here at the farm. We started growing Shiloh Noelle in 2018, and Bloomquist Compare in 2021. These dahlias are both so romantic, reliable, and vigorous. I’ve included both in flower walls, wedding work, and every dahlia application that demands the best, most lovely, fluffy, pastel beauties.

In my opinion, Bloomquist Compare would just barely win a competition between these two, simply because it is a more manageable size and has better tuber production, but dinner plate-sized Shiloh Noelle is so incredibly sweet and pillowy that it makes the cut to keep in our collection year after year. Both these dahlias have very strong stems, and a strongly similar color palette, but Shiloh Noelle is slightly shorter and has about twice the flower-size of Bloomquist Compare.

Shiloh Noelle is a giant informal decorative dahlia, with petals that twist and twirl in such a winsome way, and Bloomquist Compare has more tidy (but still a tiny bit wild!) formal decorative-form blooms.

Steve and I have curated the 700+ named varieties we’re growing in 2023 in our fields so that it’s not only stunningly beautiful, but also so we can have amazing genetic diversity here for seed production. It is so valuable to us to have loads of varieties like these available to compare blooms side by side for height and vigor, and to observe how they change throughout the season. It is also fascinating to observe the different hybridizers’ traits and preferences that show up in their creations.

I hope you’re enjoying this Variety Comparison series, and would love to know which of these pastel beauties is your favorite!