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Artful Living: Variety of peonies a garden delight

Linda Brazill  —  8/22/2008 2:12 pm

Peonies are a sentimental garden favorite whose luscious -- almost lascivious -- flowers never fail to conjure up memories of other springs, other gardens.

What we love about peonies is also what we hate about them: These beauties can't seem to hold their blowzy heads up, even in the best of weather.

Though many gardeners seem unaware of them, there are other kinds of peonies that don't have this problem. I'm not talking about tree peonies, which grow into a woody, small tree with dinner-plate size flowers. I mean the progeny of wild peonies from Japan, Turkey, Mongolia, the Himalayas and other romantic locations. Sometimes they're also referred to as species, mountain or woodland peonies.

Whatever you call them, these peonies are members of a complex family and it's easy to get confused when trying to figure out their parentage and origins. Most of these are very early blooming, herbaceous peonies that die back each year just like the more well-known border peonies (Paeonia lactiflora). But many of these peonies can take a bit of shade, like that at the edge of a woodland.

Most are single flowered with petals that are silky with a faint crinkled edge reminiscent of handmade paper. They range in color from white to pink to intense red.

I'm currently growing five varieties: japonica, two kinds of obvata, anomala and vetchii. The obvatas and japonica (planted in 2006) all flowered for the first time this spring -- all on May 7. The anomala and vetchii plants are still too young to flower; they need at least another year to mature.

While the flowers of japonica and obvata are ethereally beautiful, the leaves of the obvata (alba variety) are extraordinary. They emerged the most amazing soft copper color and stayed that way until just after the plant bloomed. Now they are slowly turning to green.

But as beautiful as the leaves and flowers are, I can't wait to see the obvata seed pods that Klehm's Song Sparrow catalog describes as "brilliant blue-black" and notes that they "glisten against a red backdrop." What a spectacle!

Alas, you will have to do a little searching to find these peonies. Even the Klehm family, who have been breeding peonies for generations, only offer a couple of varieties -- and not every year. Last year they stocked japonica and obvata peonies in the catalog and Web site, but I could not find either listed this year.

Plant Delights Nursery, another of my favorite mail-order sources for interesting and unusual plants, did have both plants in their 2008 offerings.

Seneca Hill Perennials, a nursery in Oswego, N.Y., sells many of the less common peonies, plus a great assortment of other plants. For example, the 2008 catalog lists seven Hepaticas, 15 Cyclamen (a particular specialty), and 11 species of peonies. For many of its listings, Seneca Hill offers younger and smaller plants that make for an economical purchase. Your credit card takes less of a hit but the catch is that you may have to wait a couple of years for these plants to attain flowering size.

Prices also vary widely. My 2005 Seneca Hill vetchii cost $8 and the anomalas were $12 each. The 2006 obvata (alba variety) was $10 from Seneca Hill while Klehm's obvata cost $29.95. (It's worth noting that the Klehm tag says the peony is actually the wittmottiae variety, something the catalog did not mention.) But more noteworthy is the fact that both plants are of a similar size now and both bloomed this year.

My advice is to simply go looking to see what you can find and then buy what you like. I'm completely smitten with these beauties whose delicate looks belie their hardiness.

Renowned plant collector Reginald Farrer captured these plants perfectly when he said: "Let all those peonies that are too wild and small to cope with the bloated beauties of the border, have their acknowledged place in the garden, in some fitting corner of deep hollow or high cool ledge."

For more information on these and other unusual peonies, see:

www.plantdelights.com

www.senecahillperennials.com

www.songsparrow.com

Linda Brazill  —  8/22/2008 2:12 pm