D.‘Völkerfrieden’ has been a popular cut flower variety for over 50 years. It is highly valued for its showy, intense blue flowers and vigorous, uniform flowering habit.  

As a mutation of D.‘Völkerfrieden’, D. 'Delft Blue' inherits these same qualities, but of course, with those uniquely striped flowers.

After discovering the rogue plant, Karel set about making copies. He divided the rootstock  into 3 parts, out of which just one produced shoots with the striped flowers. Cuttings were taken from these shoots and 7 D. ‘Delft Blue’ plants were produced in 2000.

A salesman from a large plant export agency took pictures of the new variety and passed them on to a perennials exporter, who recognised its potential and the plants were then put into production.

Propagation was done both by cuttings and tissue culture, and by 2002 each method had produced 1000 plants. Tissue culture is normally the preferred propagation method for producing large numbers of plants quickly, but doesn’t appear to work well for D. ‘Delft Blue’, so the variety is now produced only from cuttings, which are also made at the Heemskerk-Rietvink nursery. It is therefore a variety that is likely to remain in limited quantities for a number of years.

In order to direct people to specific areas on large plots of nursery land, names are often given to smaller portions of land. D ‘Delft Blue’ was discovered in an area known as ‘legend’, and Karel hopes that the plant will live up to this name.