AB-Cultivars
Perennial Superstars
Arie Blom and Henk Holtmaat of AB-Cultivars
Combining superior genetics and breeding know-how, breeder; Arie Blom has developed unique, improved selections. Selections that rival and complement today’s most popular perennials. We are very excited to be working with Arie on the introduction of the Cone-fections, and Butterfly series of Echinacea, some Campanulas, Heleniums and other perennials that are coming in the future.
Arie is a fun guy who is devoted to two things, his family and his breeding. Arie breeds for two companies, AB Cultivars and Kolster, B.V., who we also represent, both in The Netherlands.
Having completed his graduate work in plant breeding at the University of Florida, Gainsville and working in a tissue 
culture laboratory in California, breeder Arie Blom, unlike many other breeders from the Netherlands knows the vastly different, often extreme climates we experience in the US. His knowledge of plant genetics along with his creativity and practical experience in the US will certainly afford him great success in the extremely competitive new perennial market.
At the moment there are Echinacea cultivars, one Astilbe, and two Campanulas, Brunnera, and Heleniums in production from AB- Cultivars.
Arie is a good sport. Even when we couldn’t get the coneflowers in bloom for a late September trade show and we made fake coneflowers out of gazing balls – Arie played a long and had a wonderful time promoting his new selections. Here he is pictured with the “fake” gazing balls at the Garden Writers show in Portland in 2008, where we launched the introduction of the first double orange coneflower, Echinacea ‘Hot Papaya’.
AB-Cultivars is co-owned by Arie Blom and Henk Holtmaat. Arie does most of the breeding and Henk is the brains behind the operations. Henk was a math teacher, so the numbers often flow so quickly out of his mind – your eyes will spin. He’s built amazing relationships with tissue culture labs all over the world and he handles the worldwide distribution of the plantlets to our licensed growers.
Breeder Arie Blom of AB-Cultivars is pictured above , and Co-Owner Henk Holtmaat is featured to the left. Check out this video of Arie talking about his breeding. Oklahoma Gardening TV interviews Arie Blom