A field guide
Heirloom pumpkins, family by family
Heirlooms run through every Pumpkin’d display, old, open-pollinated varieties grown for beauty and character. These are the families we design with: what each looks like, and the job each does on a porch.
What “heirloom” actually means
An heirloom pumpkin is an old variety, often a century old or more, whose seeds have been passed down and replanted true, rather than engineered as a modern hybrid. They were bred by market gardeners and farm families for flavor, storage life and beauty, in an era when a pumpkin had to earn its keep through a whole winter.
That history is why they look the way they do. Nobody optimizing for shipping crates breeds a flattened mahogany pumpkin with deep lobes, or a slate-blue one, or one the green of a bay tree. Heirlooms carry the shapes and colors that predate the supermarket, and on a porch, that reads instantly. A display with heirlooms in it looks chosen, because it was.
One honest note about how we sell them: your display will have heirlooms in it, but we never promise specific varieties. Wholesale lots change weekly, and the whole point of having us hand-pick is that your display comes from what is exceptional that week.
The greens and blue-grays
e.g. Jarrahdale, Blue Doll, Queensland Blue, Kabocha, Marina di Chioggia
Skins that run from deep forest green through dusty slate blue, over flesh the color of egg yolk, squat, heavily ribbed and remarkably hard-shelled. These are the display's cool note: the colors nobody expects on a porch, and the ones that make the oranges around them look twice as warm.
On the porch: Mid-stack anchors. Their flat, wide shoulders make them the most stackable pumpkins we carry, and their color reads beautifully against weathered wood and grey shingle.
The porcelain whites
e.g. Lumina, Casper, Polar Bear, Baby Boo (miniature)
True ghost-white skins, smooth and almost luminous at dusk. Whites shift a display from 'harvest' toward 'curated' faster than any other color, they read as intentional, because nobody grows a white pumpkin by accident.
On the porch: Contrast and rhythm. We thread whites through a display so the eye moves; against a dark door or evergreen shrubs they carry the whole composition.
The cheese pumpkins
e.g. Long Island Cheese, Musquée de Provence, Seminole
Named for their resemblance to a wheel of cheese: squat, deeply lobed, in muted buff and butterscotch tones. These are old American and French market varieties, grown for a century for their form and their keeping quality.
On the porch: The base of a stack. A cheese pumpkin's low, wide form was practically designed to carry two more pumpkins on its shoulders, and its hard rind holds that weight all season.
The French fairytales
e.g. Rouge Vif d'Étampes (the Cinderella), Fairytale, Galeux d'Eysines
Deep, glowing red-oranges and mahogany bronzes in dramatically flattened, ribbed forms, the pumpkins of 19th-century Paris market engravings. Galeux d'Eysines adds its famous peanut-shell warting, a texture people cross the street to look at.
On the porch: The showpiece. One great fairytale placed at eye level does more for a display than a dozen ordinary pumpkins, it is the pumpkin guests ask about.
The classic oranges
e.g. Howden, Connecticut Field, Cargo, Gladiator
The traditional carving and display pumpkins, bright, round, strong-stemmed. Heirloom color only works against a foundation of the orange everyone knows; on its own an all-heirloom porch can read cold. Ours never do, because the balance is the first thing your designer settles.
On the porch: The backbone. Every Pumpkin'd display keeps a substantial share of traditional orange so the heirlooms register as jewelry, not costume.
These, on your porch
Every display draws on the families above, composed for your porch and hand-picked the week we install.