doreen wynja / monrovia gro ers peonies · peonies work well in northwest, japanese and english...

These flowering beauties offer greater performance and variety than ever before

By Elizabeth PetersenThe popularity of the peony is not

a new thing. Every year in May and June, gar-

deners savor the showy, old-fashioned blooms of peonies. During the same bit of spring, cut stems of the beloved flowers go out to florists, who disperse them for spring festivities and bouquets.

One cut flower grower alone — Oregon Flowers, in Aurora, Ore. — 24

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Monrovia's Takara™ peony (Paeonia × 'Smith Opus 2' PP 22374) was developed through the company's Itoh peony breeding partnership with breeder Don Smith. The name Takara is taken from the Japanese word for “treasure” — and the selection's stunning colors back up that name.

harvests some 250,000 peony stems every spring. “Everybody has a story about grandma’s peonies,” said Martin Meskers, owner of Oregon Flowers.

To satisfy demand, Oregon growers produce a broad array of peonies: cut stems and rare species peonies, herba-ceous peonies, tree peonies, and the exciting (and now more affordable) Itoh or intersectional peonies. The options are breathtaking.

Beautiful bouquetsThe cut peony market is highly

competitive, Meskers said. This is because peony blooms all come on at

A passion forpeonies

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▲ A PASSIon foR PEonIES

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the same time. “Demand is high, but so is supply,” he said.

Only the earliest peonies appear in time for Mother’s Day, so growing ear-lier varieties provides the slightest edge.

Probably the most popular cut peony, Meskers said, is Sarah Bernhardt (Paeonia lactiflora ‘Sarah Bernhardt’), an old variety with huge, double pink blooms that produces an average of ten stems a year. Other popular doubles are ‘Red Charm’ and ‘Coral Charm.’

Since Meskers supplies lilies and other cut flowers to his customers year round, selling in-season cut peonies is not a problem.

In the garden: old favoritesFor gardeners who want cutting

flowers, peonies make desirable garden plants too, said landscape designer Phil

Phil Th

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The Yachiyotsubaki tree peony (P. suffruticosa 'Yachiyotsubaki') is a favorite of garden designer Phil Thornburg's. They are not true trees; rather, they are woody shrubs and don't die to the ground.

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Thornburg, owner of WinterBloom Inc., a sustainable design firm in Tigard, Ore.

“The blooms are extravagant,” he said. “Even though they last for a short time in late spring and early summer, they are very large and come in amaz-ing colors.”

Plus, peonies have compound, deeply lobed foliage that provides a backdrop for later blooming flowers and brings fall colors to the scene.

Peonies work well in Northwest, Japanese and English style gardens, Thornburg said. He recommends using herbaceous peonies as singles or in groups of similar or blending colors. A tree peony benefits from a special spot to show it off.

Blooming Nursery, a wholesale grower in Cornelius, Ore. grows her-baceous garden peonies that have

“a proven track record in the Pacific Northwest,” Sales/Marketing Coordinator June Condruk said. “They have great habits, great bloom counts, great flow-ers, beautiful fragrance and little to no disease issues,”

Condruk favors Paeonia l. ‘Edulis Superba’ and Paeonia ‘President Roosevelt.’ Edulis Superba has rose-red outer petals and magenta-rose inner petals edged in silver.

“It is so very showy and elegant; I love it,” Condruk said. ‘President Roosevelt’ has dark red flowers with yellow stamens and a gorgeous scent.

Monrovia Growers, which has a growing facility in Dayton, Ore., offers an assortment of peonies too. “Peonies are a wonderful group of plants,” New Plant Director Nicholas Staddon said.

“They have great

habits, great bloom

counts, great flowers,

beautiful fragrance

and little to no

disease issues.”

— June Condrukblooming nursery

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“We grow some very old herbaceous varieties that have earned awards for garden performance.”

Brothers Herbs & Peonies, a retail nursery in Wilsonville, Ore., special-izes in tree peonies, which offer a more structural option, even in the winter.

Known as the “king of flowers” in Asia, tree peonies are more properly classified as shrubs, owner Rick Rogers said. In a well-drained, sunny location with protection from wind, the long-lived woody plants will produce huge, colorful flowers for ages.

Rogers likes to combine tree peo-nies with other plants such as Japanese maples, smaller peonies, daylilies and hostas. “Don’t crowd them in too closely with faster-growing material,” he advised.

Rogers is a regular at local garden shows and Farmers’ Markets, but sells most of his product to Midwest, East Coast and foreign customers, includ-ing China.

“The Beijing Botanical Garden bought 400 hybrid tree peonies from us several years ago for the new American Hybrid section of the Tree Peony Garden, and the plants are settling in nicely,” Rogers said.

Typically people get peonies from China, not the other way around. “We have a long history of knowing our product,” Rogers said, however.

Brothers offers nearly 100 varieties collected from a wide geographical area, including North America, Asia, Europe, and New Zealand. Many of their offer-ings are hybrids of Paeonia suffruticosa.

Rogers grows tree peonies on their own roots. “(This is) a difficult and costly, but worthwhile propagation technique that ensures success when growing these distinct plants,” he said.

In the garden: best of bothBoth Blooming Nursery and

Monrovia also grow intersectional peo-nies, also known as Itoh peonies.

The name Itoh honors the efforts of


The enormous yellow flowers on P. x 'Yellow Doodle Dandy' PPAF — measuring up to eight inches across — truly make it a dandy. The plant was bred by Don Smith and is marketed by Monrovia as Yumi™ Itoh Peony. The name means “beauty.”

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26 SEPTEMBER 2012 ▲ DIGGER

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Toichi Itoh, the first hybridizer to suc-cessfully cross herbaceous and tree peo-nies in the 1940s. Itoh peonies have been around for years, but until recent-ly, they were extremely expensive.

“Itohs were out of reach for many, but with lots of breeding, the use of tis-sue culture and more plants available on the market, their prices are coming down,” Condruk said.

Although still more expensive than herbaceous peonies, Itohs are an entic-ing option.

“Itoh peonies combine the best of herbaceous and tree peonies,” Condruk said. “They have vigorous growth, extra strong flower stems, and handsome foli-age that dies back in the winter. They produce abundant blooms in amazing colors, which are larger and last much longer than either parent’s blooms.”

Heritage Seedlings offers several species peonies from Asia, and the fernleaf peony (Paeonia tenuifolia) is among the most popular. Reaching 1–2 feet tall, it's considered ideal for rock gardens.

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Bartzella (Paeonia × ‘Bartzella’), which Staddon called the “grandmother of them all,” was introduced in the 1960s. Back then, just one of the prized plants would cost at least $1,000.

The first of its kind, Bartzella boasts large, bright yellow double blooms typi-cal of tree peonies with sturdy stems that do not require staking. The vigor-ous plants stay only about three feet tall and wide.

“We know these plants will benefit the gardening public,” Staddon said.

Monrovia partnered with breeder Don Smith and developed a new program to memorialize Mr. Itoh, Staddon said. Representing about 20 years of work, Monrovia’s Itoh varieties are getting Japanese names with English translations. These include Keiko™, which means “adored” (P. × ‘Pink Double Dandy’); Takara™, which means “treasure” (P. × ‘Smith Opus 2’ PPAF); Yumi™, which means “beauty” (P. × ‘Yellow Doodle Dandy’); and Misaka™, which means “beautiful blossom” (P. × ‘Smith Opus 1’ PPAF).

“Itoh peonies develop very strong stems to hold up their big flowers, both in the garden and in a vase,” Staddon said. With both primary and secondary buds, plants can produce as many as 50 blooms in a season, and some sport a soft, sweet fragrance.

“Yellow used to be available only in tree peonies,” Condruk said. “Now there are yellows in every hue and exciting multi-colors. New combinations of colors are coming out every year.”

The inside flares of some Itoh peo-nies have contrasting colors. Mikasa, for instance, starts out almost amber, then matures to a “dazzling display of stun-ning butter yellow, eight-inch blooms with red flares,” Staddon said.

Blooming Nursery has only recently listed Itoh peonies in its catalog. “We reached the golden ratio when enough plants were available on the market to bring the prices down to a non-collec-tor status,” Condruk said.

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It's tough to beat the color combinations of Paeonia 'Cora Louise', with yellow flares in the middle surrounded by petals that range from hot pink in the middle to light pink at the edges.

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Julia Rose peony (Paeonia × 'Julia Rose') is another Itoh selection that requires no staking. Its large, double blossoms have a delicate apricot color to them, blending to reddish-purple at the top.

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Specialties for the collectorMark Krautmann, owner of Heritage

Seedlings in Salem, Ore. focuses on specialty tree peonies for the industry. Most of his crop travels from Oregon to the northeast and mid-Atlantic states and the Ohio Valley.

Krautmann grows a rare Chinese species peony, Paeonia delaveyi, the Maroon Tree Peony. It is an unusual deciduous shrub that matures to five to six feet tall and displays nodding, two-to-three inch, maroon flowers with yellow centers and a fine fragrance. The elaborately dissected foliage resists Botrytis too, Krautmann said.

“Species peonies are not as showy as the double-flowering deciduous peonies of mail-order catalogs or Grandma’s garden,” Krautmann said. “However, tree peonies of the red and yellow P. delaveyi species are enchant-ing short plants, only two to three feet tall, that thrive with benign neglect in rich garden soil.”

It is native to south-central China. “This species is rare in cultivation, but we made it a priority to grow it and make it available in wholesale quantities to the garden trade,” Krautmann said.

For Krautmann, these peonies rep-resent the potential for strong, cooper-ative relationships between China and the United States.

“We got rare seed during a trip to China and friendships made in the mid-’80s,” he said. “Now, we grow the spe-cies, but they don’t in China. There, the roots are collected for medicinal pur-poses, and the original plants that pro-duced our seed are gone. On a return trade mission, I presented Madame Deng (Deng Xiao Ping’s wife) a yellow-flowering Paeonia delaveyi var. lutea, now relatively rare in China. I explained that we are growing the Chinese peo-nies, and the same jet stream that brings rain to China also brings rain to the USA. We are not so different in our dependence on the natural world, clean air and water, and healthy hard-working populations. She liked that a lot.”

Species tree peonies are hard to

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grow, Krautmann said. They cannot tolerate wet ground, they are hard to propagate by grafting onto roots of the deciduous peony (P. lactiflora), and they are not available in tissue culture.

“They are harvested in late summer, which is out of sync with other plants that we harvest December to February,” he said.

Demand for Krautmann’s peonies is steady, he said, although demand is higher for Paeonia tenuifolia, the Fernleaf peony. “(It is) an exceptionally choice diminutive plant for a rock gar-den,” he said.

Garden center owners should order very early — no later than midsummer — and take delivery of bare-root liners no later than September, Krautmann advised.

“The red and yellow P. delaveyi,

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▲ Misaka means "beautiful blossom" in Japanese, and the Misaka™ peony lives up to its billing. The blossoms of this intersectional hybrid open with an orange color and fade to a peachy yellow.

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and the Ludlow (P. ludlowii, another tree peony) make great garden plants, but the Fernleaf peony will get over-whelmed by other plants in most gardens unless given its own compe-tition-free spot so it can charm your socks off,” he said.

To sell peonies, Condruk recom-mends that retailers display actual-size photos of peony flowers, or display cut blooms near the cash register. “Plants people are visual,” she said.

Provide information on growing peonies too, she said, since “peonies have a reputation for being finicky, which is not true.”

Elizabeth Petersen writes for gardeners and garden businesses, coaches stu-dents and writers, and tends a one-acre garden in West Linn, Ore. She can be reached at [email protected].

In addition to the 'Yellow Double Dandy' peony shown on page 26, there is also a 'Pink Double Dandy', marketed as Keiko™.

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doreen wynja / monrovia gro ers peonies · peonies work well in northwest, japanese and english...

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