Peonies give your garden bursts of color and wonderful fragrance. Being a perennial they come up every year and are easy to grow. Peonies are versatile, long-lived landscape plants. They can make excellent low hedges in the summer or used as a group or singularly to splash color as a focal point or accent in flowerbeds and borders.
To make the wisest selections for your particular garden, know the many forms: single, Japanese, bomb, double, and semi-double. Single peonies contain rows of five or more big petals encircling a fertile center of seed-bearing yellow stamens. Japanese, including anemone, have five or more petals with a showy cluster of small, sterile, petal-like segments in one or more areas. The bomb form has the blossom’s mounded center full of petals that are smaller than the outer petals, but have a similar color and texture. Double peonies have large outer petals surrounded by frilly overlapped petals of the same color. They form a big, classic, rose-like globe that has almost invisible stamens. Semi-double peonies have fewer inner petals than a double with the petals being fairly uniform. They are decorative, bear pollen, and the yellow stamens stand out against the petal color, unlike the double peony.
Garden peonies (Paeonia lactiflora cultivars and hybrids) are bushy plants, averaging 3 feet tall and as wide. They bloom 5-10 days in late spring and early summer, bearing 3 to 6 inches in diameter flowers in the shape forms mentioned above. These blooms are often perfumed and come in snowy white to pink, magenta, red, lavender and primrose yellow, chartreuse green and my favorite, salmon. After the blooms have gone, their full foliage makes a great drop back for later blooming perennials or annuals. Some peony foliage actually turns reddish in the fall adding seasonal interest to your garden. There are late-blooming peonies to choose from, too.
Peonies are tough, need little care, and are hardy in Zones 3-8. They have a tuberous root structure that spread 1 to 2 feet beyond the plant. In the South, early-blooming single or Japanese types grow best. Be patient with newly purchased peony plants to bloom after planting. Potted peonies after transplanting them into the soil can take up a year or two to flower. Bare-root peonies, ideally planted from September to mid-October, may take up to three years to flower. Plant in moist, well-drained, fertile soil setting the eyes or buds of the plant at the top of a root 1-2 inches below the soil surface, no more. Keep the bare-root away from standing water, which can rot it. Mulch loosely the first winter after planting, removing it in spring. Use bone meal and wood ash in the spring or early summer after they have bloomed to fertilize your peonies. For the best flowering, give peonies full sun and try to avoid much competition from surrounding plants.
