Peony Progression / UPDATE April 13

A fuchsia-hued peony, from May 2019, outside the English Garden

One of the jewels of our garden is our extensive collection of Peonies.

In the Great Garden alone, we have dozens of named varieties.

Rain-splattered bud of Peony 'Doreen' in the Great Garden

It is startling how rapidly those crimson stalks rise each spring.  They look like the most delicious asparagus in the world, but surprisingly few if any critters choose to nibble on them. They are mildly toxic.

Rapidly rising crimson stalks in the Great Garden

In a few weeks, they will bear their gloriously lavish flowers. They are beloved by our volunteer flower arrangers for their brief but glorious season. Our dried flower arrangers also have a knack for preserving these bodacious but ephemeral blooms.

Some of our peony hoops in the Pole Barn, waiting to be deployed. We will use all of these (and more) before peony season is over.

Until then, we will do our best to keep up! The stalks grow prodigiously. Like a lot of our most cherished garden plants, they require a little special care. Each plant will be hooped with a metal grid to better hold up its exuberant blossoms. They are worth this extra effort!

Peonies progress from asparagus-like stalk to leafy bush in a remarkably short time. These vigorous, early clumps in the Great Garden are hooped for support and waiting to bloom. April 8, 2020.

We'll add some pictures in the coming weeks as the stalks rise, the buds swell, and eventually, the blossoms explode.

One of scores of named varietals in our extensive collection in the Great Garden.

Peony under a pollarded apple tree in the Great Garden, May 2019.

Blossom and pregnant bud in the Great Garden, May 2019
UPDATES: April 13th 2020

 Thank you Sue Floyd, one of our Garden Volunteers for these gorgeous photos from Peony Season 2018!

Peonies in Bed A1 along the Well Road. 2018

Unknown variety, Chinese Peony. 2018.


Fully double pale pink peony blossoms, Great Garden. 2018.

Peonies and Iris pseudacorus in the Great Garden, in front of a leafed out Yoshino cherry. 2018.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Keep Us All Connected

Image
These early days of Spring, so much can change in a day. Hellebores in the Birch Tree Allee To keep us all connected, this temporary blog will be a place where we can share pictures and stories from the garden we all love, but that many of us cannot be in for the time being. Horticulture staff will add pictures and updates as we can. And perhaps as time goes on we can add pictures of what people may be working on in their gardens at home. Forsythia and Yoshino Cherry, just starting to bloom on a cloudy spring day Looking forward to the day when we can all be in the garden again, soon! Freshly pruned Mackintosh apple trees in the Great Garden.
Read more

English Garden Update

Image
Tree Peonies in bloom, May 2019 What's going on in the English garden so far this spring? Plants in the English Garden are slowly emerging and just a couple early bloomers such as the Rock Cress and some early yellow primrose are showing color. Today the Peony hoops have been installed to hold up the gorgeous blooms we should be seeing in about a month. The Greenhouse crew was busy growing lots of replacement perennials for the English Garden in the past several months. Some of the plants were started as seed or divisions taken in the fall and others were bought in as bare root. Because our Greenhouse space in so limited and annual production is in full swing, this meant we had to get the perennials out quickly to their new home in the English Garden. To do this so early, we had to slowly transfer perennials grown in a 75 degree greenhouse, to a make shift cold frame, and then lastly outside to get them acclimated to our cold nights. Thousands of plants in one o...
Read more

Snow on the Daffodils

Image
Sunrise over the Manor House, April 10, 2020. Yoshino Cherries in bloom with a pink cloud background, and in the foreground, fittingly, an heirloom variety of apple tree known as "Snow." There is an old adage, "It always snows on the daffodils." Weeping cherry tree and snowy daffodils near the Gardener's Cottage. I am not sure the origin of this wisdom, but snow on the daffodils is something most springs in Ohio you can count on. For one thing, daffodils have a very long blooming season: the earliest arriving sometimes in February, with a continued progression of bloom more or less through April. And most Aprils, we can count on one or more big snows. Manor House viewed through the Rose Garden, April 10, 2020. Including Good Friday, April 10, 2020. We awoke to several inches of light fluffy snow. And at sunrise, pink clouds over the Manor House cleared way for briefly blue skies. Rising sun illuminates the Birch Allee, April 10, 2020...
Read more